Focus on Canada

Focus on Canada

Author: Sandra Clarke

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1993-11-04

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9027276811

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although varieties of North American English have come in for a good deal of linguistic scrutiny in recent years, the vast majority of published works have dealt with American rather than Canadian English. This volume constitutes a welcome addition to our linguistic knowledge of English-speaking Canada. While the focus of the volume is primarily synchronic, several of the dozen papers it contains offer a diachronic perspective on Canadian English. Topics range from general issues in Canadian lexicography and orthography to sociolinguistic studies of varieties of English spoken in all major geographical areas of the country: Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Quebec and the West. A theme common to many of the articles is the relationship of Canadian English to American varieties to the south.


International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature

Author: Editor

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2012-07-12

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 1471783707

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature (IJALEL) is a peer-reviewed journal established in Australia. Authors are encouraged to submit complete unpublished and original works which are not under review in any other journal. The scopes of the journal include, but not limited to, the following topic areas: Applied Linguistics, Linguistics, and English Literature. The journal is published in both printed and online versions. The online version is free access and downloadable.Vol. 1 No. 1


Bad Language

Bad Language

Author: Edwin Battistella

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-08-25

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0199883831

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Is today's language at an all-time low? Are pronunciations like cawfee and chawklit bad English? Is slang like my bad or hook up improper? Is it incorrect to mix English and Spanish, as in Yo quiero Taco Bell? Can you write Who do you trust? rather than Whom do you trust? Linguist Edwin Battistella takes a hard look at traditional notions of bad language, arguing that they are often based in sterile conventionality. Examining grammar and style, cursing, slang, and political correctness, regional and ethnic dialects, and foreign accents and language mixing, Battistella discusses the strong feelings evoked by language variation, from objections to the pronunciation NU-cu-lar to complaints about bilingual education. He explains the natural desire for uniformity in writing and speaking and traces the association of mainstream norms to ideas about refinement, intelligence, education, character, national unity and political values. Battistella argues that none of these qualities is inherently connected to language. It is tempting but wrong, Battistella argues, to think of slang, dialects and nonstandard grammar as simply breaking the rules of good English. Instead, we should view language as made up of alternative forms of orderliness adopted by speakers depending on their purpose. Thus we can study the structure and context of nonstandard language in order to illuminate and enrich traditional forms of language, and make policy decisions based on an informed engagement. Re-examining longstanding and heated debates, Bad Language will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers engaged and interested in the debate over what constitutes proper language.


Multiword expressions

Multiword expressions

Author: Manfred Sailer

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 3961100632

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Multiword expressions (MWEs) are a challenge for both the natural language applications and the linguistic theory because they often defy the application of the machinery developed for free combinations where the default is that the meaning of an utterance can be predicted from its structure. There is a rich body of primarily descriptive work on MWEs for many European languages but comparative work is little. The volume brings together MWE experts to explore the benefits of a multilingual perspective on MWEs. The ten contributions in this volume look at MWEs in Bulgarian, English, French, German, Maori, Modern Greek, Romanian, Serbian, and Spanish. They discuss prominent issues in MWE research such as classification of MWEs, their formal grammatical modeling, and the description of individual MWE types from the point of view of different theoretical frameworks, such as Dependency Grammar, Generative Grammar, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Lexicon Grammar.


English Tags

English Tags

Author: Veronica Bonsignori

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-07-08

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1443863688

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a thorough quantitative and qualitative study of a typical phenomenon pertaining to the English spoken language; namely question tags (QTs) and invariant tags. More specifically, English tags are analysed on the syntactic, pragmatic and prosodic level, taking into account cross-varietal differences as well as both visual and auditory dimensions, in order to get a more precise interpretation of their communicative functions. This is made possible by examining film language, since films, being complex semiotic “texts”, provide a more complete set of parameters for analysis, especially in the case of QTs, where intonation is crucial for their interpretation. The study of their function is based not only on their formal properties, but is integrated with the use of spectrograms, which makes it possible to actually “visualise” the prosody of tags and to back up the results with material evidence. Moreover, tags are also examined from a translational perspective, with analysis focusing on the transposition of tags in Italian dubbing, a specific type of audiovisual translation, for two main reasons: firstly, to check how and to what extent tags are rendered in Italian, a language which does not have so structured a set of equivalent expressions, and secondly, to see how much space they are granted in a typically “constrained” translation like dubbing, which is severely influenced by the visual dimension. After this, the use of the various translating options in Italian dubbing is studied in Italian original film language and compared with spontaneous conversation in both languages, by analysing data in corpora of spontaneous speech both in English and Italian to ascertain whether the use of tags and their Italian counterparts in film language is natural or artificial. The present work is the first to study the syntactic and prosodic properties of English tags from an integrated pragmatic and translational perspective. The study also qualifies as contrastive in that the use of these conversational routines is analysed in two different languages (English and Italian), as well as in different genres and varieties, including film language, dubbese and spontaneous speech.


Meaning, Language, and Time

Meaning, Language, and Time

Author: Kevin J. Porter

Publisher: Parlor Press LLC

Published: 2006-03-11

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 1932559809

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Given the history of concepts like meaning, time, language, and discourse, any serious attempt to understand them must be interdisciplinary; so MEANING, LANGUAGE, AND TIME draws on a wide range of important work in the history of philosophy, rhetoric, and composition. In this groundbreaking work, Porter joins these conversations with the aim of breaching the traditional disciplinary walls and opening new areas of inquiry.


The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics

The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics

Author: José Ignacio Hualde

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-04-16

Total Pages: 906

ISBN-13: 1405198826

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Reflecting the growth and increasing global importance of the Spanish language, The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics brings together a team of renowned Spanish linguistics scholars to explore both applied and theoretical work in this field. Features 41 newly-written essays contributed by leading language scholars that shed new light on the growth and significance of the Spanish language Combines current applied and theoretical research results in the field of Spanish linguistics Explores all facets relating to the origins, evolution, and geographical variations of the Spanish language Examines topics including second language learning, Spanish in the classroom, immigration, heritage languages, and bilingualism


A Bibliography of Writings on Varieties of English, 1965–1983

A Bibliography of Writings on Varieties of English, 1965–1983

Author:

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1984-01-01

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 902727987X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

After the growth of English and American dialectology since the 1930’s and the expansion of sociolinguistics since the 1960’s, the study of ‘world English’ has emerged in recent years to join these other disciplines. This bibliography is intended to reflect what has been achieved in this area and to serve as an indispensible research tool for further investigations. The bibliography is divided into three parts, each one is preceded by a preface which explains the procedures followed and each of the sections is followed by an index. It classifies the items according to specific areas, ethnic groups, or similar topics.