A Crosslinguistic Perspective on Clear and Approximate Categorization
A Crosslinguistic Perspective on Clear and Approximate Categorization

Author: Hélène Vassiliadou

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2022-11-07

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1527589099

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In recent decades, research on clear and approximate categorizations and their manifestations in language has been generating a number of studies on syntax, semantics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, philosophy, and logic. This is particularly interesting because these two operations have formally similar realizations even in languages belonging to different groups. The existence of a large number of type nouns testifies to their productivity. If these nouns serve to both categorize and approximate, the fundamental question is that of identifying the processes of interpretation concerned, since there is not always a consensus on interpretation. This book makes it clear that there are different ways to reach the category associated with a word by putting into perspective the issues surrounding the categorization and approximation and by comparing the ways of expression in languages belonging to different language groups. All in all, by investigating syntactic, morphological, and semantic correlations between type noun binominals and other constructions in various languages, this volume will provide an overview of the current state of research on the subject in order to help scholars and students to grasp the meaning and the cognitive foundations of approximation and categorization. The functioning of each language might clarify the links between categorization and approximation, two often opposed, yet essentially indissociable, operations.

Vagueness, Ambiguity, and All the Rest
Vagueness, Ambiguity, and All the Rest

Author: Ilaria Fiorentini

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2024-10-15

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9027246564

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This book aims to address a gap in the existing literature on the relationship between vagueness and ambiguity, as well as on their differences and similarities, both in synchrony and diachrony, and taking into consideration their relation to language use. The book is divided into two parts, which address specific and broader research questions from different perspectives. The former part examines the differences between ambiguity and vagueness from a bird-eye perspective, with a particular focus on their respective functions and roles in language change. It also presents innovative linguistic resources and tools for the study of these phenomena. The second part contains case studies on vagueness and ambiguity in language change and use. It considers different strategies and languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Medieval Latin, and Old Italian. The readership for this volume is broad, encompassing scholars in a range of disciplines, including pragmatics, spoken discourse, conversation analysis, discourse genres (political, commercial, notarial discourse), corpus studies, language change, pragmaticalization, and language typology.

Type Noun Constructions in Slavic, Germanic and Romance Languages
Type Noun Constructions in Slavic, Germanic and Romance Languages

Author: Wiltrud Mihatsch

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-04-27

Total Pages: 648

ISBN-13: 3110701162

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This volume is the first dedicated to the comprehensive, in-depth analysis of constructions with nouns like ‘type’ and ‘sort’. It focuses on type noun constructions in Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, integrating the different descriptive traditions that had been developed for each language family. As a result, a greater variety of type noun constructions is revealed than in the hitherto more fragmented literature. But attention is also drawn to the cross-linguistic similarity of the new pragmatic meanings, such as ad hoc and approximative categorization, hedging, focus and filler uses, and the new grammatical functions in NPs (e.g. phoric uses), clauses (e.g. adverbial uses) and complex sentences (e.g. quotatives). The volume offers survey chapters of type noun constructions in each language family as well as contributions focusing on specific aspects in one or two languages, such as their grammar, semantics and pragmatics, diachronic development, discursive and sociolinguistic variety. These complementary methodologies elucidate the unique cross-linguistic field of type noun constructions both descriptively and theoretically. Hence, this volume can also serve as a model for similar surveys in other functional domains.

Building Categories in Interaction
Building Categories in Interaction

Author: Caterina Mauri

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2021-12-15

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 9027258996

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This book addresses the topic of linguistic categorization from a novel perspective. While most of the early research has focused on how linguistic systems reflect some pre-existing ways of categorizing experience, the contributions included in this volume seek to understand how linguistic resources of various nature (prosodic cues, affixes, constructions, discourse markers, ...) can be ‘put to work’ in order to actively build categories in discourse and in interaction, to achieve social goals. This question is addressed in different ways by researchers from different subfields of linguistics, including psycholinguistics, conversation analysis, linguistic typology and discourse pragmatics, and a major point of innovation is represented in fact by the interdisciplinary nature of the volume and in the systematic search for converging evidence.

Indexicality
Indexicality

Author: Peter Juul Nielsen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-06-04

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 3110791439

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The book offers the first full-scale focused treatment of linguistic indexicality as a tool for analysis and explanation of the organization of linguistic structures. The book demonstrates the application of the concept of indexicality in the description of a broad range of linguistic phenomena, from the internal workings of morphology via relations within syntactic constructions to lexical and grammatical elements designed to hook on to features outside the clause in the interactional context. The book offers a focused treatment of the general nature of linguistic indexicality in the larger perspective of the semiotics of language, including examinations of domain-straddling indexical functions. It presents studies of the role of indexicality in synchrony and diachrony with descriptive cases from a number of languages from diverse language families and it examines the way indexicality enters into the mechanisms of change, including examinations of semiotic shifts from indexical to symbolic function and vice versa. The book is relevant for researchers and students in historical and synchronic linguistics from a variety of linguistic frameworks with an interest in the role of semiotics in linguistic analysis.

New Challenges in Typology
New Challenges in Typology

Author: Matti Miestamo

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-09-25

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 3110198908

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The sixteen chapters in this volume are written by typologists and typologically oriented field linguists who have completed their Ph.D. theses in the first four years of this millennium. The authors address selected theoretical questions of general linguistic relevance drawing from a wealth of data hitherto unfamiliar to the general linguistic audience. The general aim is to broaden the horizons of typology by revisiting existing typologies with larger language samples, exploring domains not considered in typology before, taking linguistic diversity more seriously, strengthening the connection between typology and areal linguistics, and bridging the gap to other fields, such as historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. The papers cover grammatical phenomena from phonology, morphology up to the syntax of complex sentences. The linguistic phenomena scrutinized include the following: foot and stress, tone, infixation, inflection vs. derivation, word formation, polysynthesis, suppletion, person marking, reflexives, alignment, transitivity, tense-aspect-mood systems, negation, interrogation, converb systems, and complex sentences. More general methodological and theoretical issues, such as reconstruction, markedness, semantic maps, templates, and use of parallel corpora, are also addressed. The contributions in this volume draw from many traditional fields of linguistics simultaneously, and show that it is becoming harder and maybe also less desirable to keep them separate, especially when taking a broadly cross-linguistic approach to language. The book is of interest to typologists and field linguists, as well as to any linguists interested in theoretical issues in different subfields of linguistics.

Word-Formation in the World's Languages
Word-Formation in the World's Languages

Author: Pavol Štekauer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-23

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 052176534X

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Fills a gap in cross-linguistic research by being the first systematic survey of the word-formation of the world's languages. Data from fifty-five world languages reveals associations between word-formation processes in genetically and geographically distinct languages.

Toward A Genetics of Language
Toward A Genetics of Language

Author: Mabel L. Rice

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2013-02-01

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 1134789254

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The past decade has brought important new advances in the fields of genetics, behavioral genetics, linguistics, language acquisition, studies of language impairment, and brain imaging. Although these advances are each highly relevant to the determination of what a child is innately prepared to bring to language acquisition, the contributing fields of endeavor have traditionally been relatively self-contained, with little cross communication. This volume was developed with the belief that there is considerable value to be gained in the creation of a shared platform for a dialogue across the disciplines. Leading experts in genetics, linguistics, language acquisition, language impairment, and brain imaging are brought together for the purpose of exploring the current evidence, theoretical issues, and research challenges in a way that bridges disciplinary boundaries and points toward future developments in the search for the genetic and environmental bases of language acquisition and impairments. This collection provides discussions and summaries of: *breakthrough findings of the genetic underpinnings of dyslexia; *theoretical and empirical developments in the specification of a phenotype of language acquisition and impairment; *evidence of familiarity and twin concordances of specific language impairment; and *new evidence from brain imaging. It concludes with a critical response from an advocate of rational empiricism.

Scalar Implicatures
Scalar Implicatures

Author: Penka Stateva

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

Published: 2019-10-18

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 2889631346

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Scalar implicatures have enjoyed the status of one of the most researched topics in both theoretical and experimental pragmatics in recent years. This Research Topic presents new developments in studying the comprehension, as well as the production of scalar inferences, suggests new testing paradigms that trigger important discussions about the methodology of experimental investigation, explores the effect of prosody and context on inference rates. To a great extent the articles reflect the state of the art in the domain and outline promising paths for future research.