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This book provides a systematic, empirical account of the language typically presented in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks, based on a large corpus of EFL textbooks used in secondary schools. A modified version of the Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) framework serves to examine linguistic variation both within textbooks and compared to corpora representing 'real-life' English as used outside the EFL classroom. The results highlight the characteristics of Textbook English that define it as a distinct variety of English. In light of the study's pedagogical implications, this book proposes a range of corpus-based approaches to improve the naturalness of textbook texts. It also contributes to advancing quantitative corpus linguistics methodology: its detailed online supplements aim for methodological transparency and reproducibility in line with the principles of Open Science. This book will be of interest to linguistics and language education students and researchers, as well as EFL teachers, textbook authors and editors, and those involved in curriculum development and teacher training.

Focusing on the growing trend of employing the present tense in storytelling, this book explores present-tense narrative in contemporary fiction. Using a corpus approach, speech, writing, and thought presentation in 21st-century present-tense narrative is compared with 20th-century past-tense narrative. An in-depth comparative analysis reveals previously undiscovered innovative features specific to how character discourse is presented in modern narratives. Notably, narrative tenses have an impact on thought presentation; in present-tense narrative, Free Direct Thought (FDT) emerges as frequently as Free Indirect Thought (FIT), a departure from the dominance of FIT in modern past-tense narrative. This book will be of interest to stylisticians, narratologists, corpus linguists, and those who have found themselves absorbed in a 21st-century work of present-tense fiction.

Emphasizing the necessity for theory-driven language acquisition research, the studies in this collection aim to formalize the kinds of information available to first and second language learners, as well as to shed light on how that information is used to solve a variety of learning problems. The volume pays homage to the scholarly contributions of Susanne E. Carroll, delving into the impact she has had on the field of language acquisition. The central themes of input, evidence, and exposure - found throughout Carroll's work ­- are explored in this volume. The contributions cover a range of topics such as the emergence of linguistic theorizing in language acquisition research, the acquisition of grammatical gender, classroom language learning, learning on first exposure, asymmetries between developmental trajectories in first and second language acquisition, and the effects of grammatical complexity on language development.

This monograph aims to shed light on the linguistic endeavors and educational practices employed by 17th century Spanish Dominicans in their efforts to understand and disseminate knowledge of the Chinese language during this historical period. Ample attention is dedicated to the evolution of Chinese grammars and dictionaries by these authors. Central to the monograph is the manuscript "Marsh 696", which comprises a Chinese-Spanish dictionary and a fragmentary Spanish grammar of Mandarin Chinese, a hitherto unknown and unpublished anonymous and undated text entitled Arte de lengua mandarina. This text is probably a fragment of the earliest grammar written by a Westerner of Mandarin Chinese (completed in Manila in c.1641), previously presumed lost. It is presented here as a facsimile, a transcription of the Spanish text and an English translation alongside a detailed linguistic analysis. The historical framework outlined in this monograph spans from the predecessors of Francisco Díaz (1606-1646) around 1620, including the Jesuit linguistic production in mainland China and Early Manila Hokkien sources, to the era wherein Antonio Díaz (1667-1715) finalized his revised version of Francisco Díaz's dictionary. The monograph scrutinizes these texts in relation to the linguistic contributions of Francisco Varo (1627-1687). Additionally, the monograph incorporates other unpublished texts that are significant for reconstructing the educational curriculum for teaching and learning Chinese by Dominican friars during this period.

Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings explores an innovative proposal: that linguistic similarities identified in different forms of contact-influenced varieties of language use (including translation, native and non-native varieties of English, and language use of bilinguals more generally) can be accounted for in a coherent framework grounded in the notion of 'constrained communication'. These varieties have hitherto been studied in independent scholarly traditions, especially translation studies and world Englishes, leaving the potential underlying unity underexplored, both conceptually and empirically. The chapters collected in this volume aim to develop such a unified perspective by drawing on corpus data across a range of languages and language varieties, with a focus on written language, a neglected data source in research on multilingual contact settings. The findings point to shared general characteristics across individual contact settings, which result from (probabilistically conditioned) manifestations of the same deeper regularities - constraints - present in diverse language-contact settings.

This volume consists of a collection of empirical studies and research syntheses investigating the role of individual difference (ID) variables in task-based language teaching (TBLT)-a pedagogical approach that emphasizes the importance of the performance of meaning-oriented tasks in facilitating second language learning. TBLT is subject to learner-external as well as learner-internal factors, with the former referring to task- and context-related factors, and the latter to ID factors pertaining to learner traits, dispositions, or propensities. To date, the research has focused primarily on learner-external factors, and there has been insufficient and unsystematic research on individual difference factors. This volume brings centre stage this important but under-researched dimension by means of a comprehensive, in-depth examination of the role of key ID factors in TBLT. The volume integrates theory, research, and pedagogy by spelling out the mechanism through which IDs influence learning attainment, behaviours, and processes, examining evidence for theoretical claims, and discussing ways to apply research findings and cater to individual differences in the task-based classroom.

This volume brings together contributions selected from papers delivered at the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL, Leiden 2021). The chapters deal with aspects of language use throughout the history of English, including efforts to prescribe and regulate language in texts that share specific forms, functions, and audiences. They feature both quantitative and qualitative analyses of changing language use, often in relation to trends of language advice in such metalinguistic works as grammars, spelling books, and usage guides. The authors showcase work on pragmatics and prescriptivism (understatement between Middle and Late Modern English, capitalization of common nouns from Early to Late Modern English, and the use of stigmatized grammatical variants in eighteenth-century plays), specific text types (case studies of political, legal and medical English), and the language of late modern letters (diachronic stylistic changes, letter-copying practices, the role of letter-writing manuals, and changing spelling practices). This volume will be of interest to those working on pragmatics, prescriptivism and sociolinguistics of English, historical linguistics, language change, computational historical linguistics, and related sub-disciplines.

This book discusses patterns of predication and their grammatical and semantic implications in a variety of African languages. It covers several prominent topics about predication in the languages, including locative predication, expressions of tense, aspect, and mood in relation to verbal complexes and verb serialisation, verb semantics, and nominalization of predicates. The chapters take inspiration from Felix Ameka's approach to the study of language according to which the main task of a linguist is to collaborate with language users to understand communicative practices in different contexts and to uncover how these practices impact grammatical and semantic aspects of the language. Accordingly, the descriptions and analyses in this book serve to understand language variation in different ecologies, rather than to impose pre-established descriptive frames on less described languages. Together, the chapters in the book represent a bird's eye view of predication strategies in various African languages and can therefore serve as readings for both introductory and advanced level courses on predication from a typological or comparative perspective.

This volume brings together contributions selected from papers delivered at the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL, Leiden 2021). The contributions deal with various aspects of English language across time and geographical space, shedding light on both long-term developments and singular documents of particular linguistic interest. A wide range of methodologies are represented, including corpus linguistics, acoustic phonetics and philology. Chapters showcase work on syntax and word order (parataxis and hypotaxis from Old to Late Modern English; left-dislocation in Old English; do-support in Scots), diachronic linguistic change (phonological developments of lateral /l/ in English; modality in noun clauses from Old to Early Modern English; editorial practices of Middle English punctuation across time) and lexicography and lexis (Old English glosses of the Durham Ritual; Old English lexicographers from 17th-century Germany; lexical differences between Old and Middle English; Yiddish loanwords in English). This volume will be of interest to those working on morphology, syntax and lexicography of English, historical linguistics, language change, history of linguistics, computational historical linguistics and related sub-disciplines.

This volume collects research on language, cognition, and communication in multilingualism. Apart from theoretical concerns including grammatical description, language-specific analyses, and modeling of multilingualism, different fields of study and research interests center around three core themes: The Early Years (aspects of language acquisition and development, including vernaculars or minority languages, reading, writing, and cognition, and multilingual extensions), Issues in Everyday Life (the role of multilingualism in and for speech-language-communication difficulties, including diagnosis, provisions of services, and later language breakdown), and From the Past to the Future (aspects of multilingualism beyond acquisition, education, or pathology, with a focus on heritage languages and translanguaging). Specialists from each of these areas introduce state-of-the-art research, novel experimental studies, and/or quantitative as well as qualitative data bearing on 'multifaceted multilingualism'. There is a broad spectrum for take-home messages, ranging from new theoretical analyses or approaches to assess multilingual speakers all the way to recommendations for policy-makers.

Although there is a large literature on referentiality, going back to at least the nineteenth and early twentieth century, much of this early work is based on constructed data and most of it is on English. The chapters in this volume contribute to a growing body of work that examines referentiality through naturalistic data in context. Taking an interactional approach to (non)referentiality, contributors to this volume ask how participants talk in real time about persons and things as individuals or as categories, and what distinguishes 'referential' from 'nonreferential', 'specific' from 'nonspecific', and 'generic' from 'nongeneric'. Crucially, we ask whether these distinctions even matter to participants in conversation, and if they do, what the evidence for that would be. Contributors investigate these issues using data from conversational interaction in a variety of social contexts - including between close friends and family to more casual acquaintances, in service encounters, and between adults and children - and in a range of languages: English, Finnish, French, Indonesian, Japanese and Mandarin. Collectively, the chapters develop insights showing that reference is often fluid, dynamic, and indeterminate, that referential indeterminacy is typically unproblematic for participants, that shifts in referentiality tend to be tied to specific social goals, and that reference and referentiality emerge dialogically and interactionally.

Die Rezeption der Texte von Aristoteles in verschiedenen Welten hat zu Umformungen geführt, von denen manche noch heute als Meinung des Aristoteles selbst behauptet werden. Wenn es möglich ist, diese aus verschiedenen Welten herkommenden Umgestaltungen ausdrücklich zu machen, können sie methodisch ausgeschaltet werden. Beispiele solcher Sedimente der Rezeption betreffen zentrale Themen, beispielsweise, dass Aristoteles eine Substanz-Metaphysik entwickelt habe, aus welcher letztlich eine theologische Ausrichtung oder mindestens ein theologischer Höhepunkt folge. Dass dies eine der Wirkungen der durch verschiedene pseudo-aristotelische Texte bestimmten Rezeption ist, wird heute kaum mehr wahrgenommen, weil die moderne Lektüre des Corpus Aristotelicum schon entsprechend gesteuert ist. Die vorliegende Studie versucht an Hand der Kommentare von Albertus Magnus und von Thomas von Aquin zu Metaphysik XII diese Wirkung der Rezeption zu belegen. Ein Nebenprodukt der Arbeit besteht in der Einsicht in den Paradigmenwechsel in der Theologie bei den zwei Genannten. The reception of Aristotle's texts in different worlds has led to transformations, some of which are still claimed today as the opinions of Aristotle himself. If it is possible to make these transformations coming from different worlds explicit, they can be methodically eliminated. Examples of such reception sediments concern central themes, for example that Aristotle developed a metaphysics of substance, from which a theological orientation or at least a theological climax ultimately follows. The fact that this is one of the effects of the reception determined by various pseudo-Aristotelian texts is hardly noticed today because the modern reading of the Corpus Aristotelicum is already steered accordingly. The present study attempts to demonstrate this effect of reception using the commentaries of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas on Metaphysics XII. A by-product of the work is the insight into the paradigm shift in theology among the two mentioned.

As a first attempt to date, this book addresses the notion of hypocrisy from a pragmatic perspective and devises a comprehensive model of verbal hypocrisy. The studies included adopt emic and etic approaches in order to contribute jointly towards an understanding of what appears to be a ubiquitous and multifaceted phenomenon. Going beyond hypocrisy as a mere moral vice, this volume establishes its pragmatic space and confronts it with adjacent notions which, unlike hypocrisy, have been subject to pragmatic examination. The Pragmatics of Hypocrisy is of interest to students and scholars in pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, rhetoric, communication and media studies, as well as corpus linguistics, and by its transdisciplinary nature, to researchers in philosophy, sociology, and political science. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the interplay between language, culture and society, across varieties and registers of English.

This volume connects the latest research on language acquisition across the lifespan with the explanation of language change in specific sociohistorical settings. This conversation benefits from recent advances in two areas: on the one hand, the study of how learners of various ages and in various sociolinguistic contexts acquire language variation; on the other, historical sociolinguistics as the field that focuses on the study of historical patterns of language variation and change. The overarching rationale for this interdisciplinary dialogue is that all forms of language change start and spread as the result of individual acts of acquisition throughout the speakers' lives. The thirteen chapters in this book are authored by an international group of both established and emerging scholars. They encompass theoretical overviews of specific research areas within the broader realm of the acquisition of language variation, as well as case studies applying these theoretical advances to the exploration of language change in a wide range of sociohistorical contexts in the Americas, Oceania, and Asia. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers in the area of language acquisition, language variation and language change, especially those working on interdisciplinary and crosslinguistic connections among these areas.

Displacement (of linguistic expressions) is a ubiquitous phenomenon in natural language. In the generative tradition, displacement is modelled in terms of transformation, or more precisely, movement, which establishes dependencies among syntactic constituents in a phrase structure. This book probes the question regarding to what extent movement theories can be unified. Specifically, I address issues surrounding the debate of the distinction between head movement and phrasal movement over the past few decades. The distinction presupposes that structural complexity of the moving element is correlated with its movement properties. The goal of this book is to show that this is an unwarranted assumption. Based on a number of case studies on verb displacement phenomena in Cantonese, I attempt a unified theory of movement by abandoning the head/phrase distinction in movement theories. These case studies converge on the conclusion that the phrase structure status of syntactic constituents bears a minimal role in theorizing displacement phenomena in natural language. This volume represents a minimalist pursuit of a unified theory of movement.

This volume celebrates Robert B. Howell's wide-ranging contribution as a scholar, mentor, collaborator, and colleague in the field of Germanic linguistics. In addition to investigating present-day or past varieties of Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Flemish, German, and Pennsylvania Dutch, each of the thirteen contributions in this volume explores one or more of the topics found in Howell's work: (1) Linguistic structure and change (Page, Sundquist, Fagan, De Vaan); (2) Migration, contact, and change (Fertig, Louden, Roberge); (3) Vernacular sources and change (Auer & Gordon, Hendriks, Van der Wal); (4) Historical sociolinguistics: past, present, and future (Van Bree, Crombez, Vandenbussche & Vosters, Lauersdorf & Salmons).

The chapters in this volume study the construction, representation and negotiation of a variety of social roles through self- and other-reference markers or the discussion of reference as a tool for identification. The chapters uncover new insights both from a historical and present-day perspective and show how positioning the self and other varies, what kind of reference choices language users make and what follows from these choices. The data come from a variety of public texts, private encounters and questionnaires, and the methodologies range from macro to micro perspectives, including combinations of qualitative close-reading and quantitative corpus methods, and synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The findings enhance our understanding and use of reference practices in the context of global, institutional, political and multicultural, as well as media texts.

This is the first book that presents a complete description and analysis of the Spanish suffixes that alter the grammatical behaviour of nouns and adjectives without changing their grammatical category, supporting a fine-grained decomposition of the syntactic area where these word classes are defined. In this monograph the reader will find a detailed empirical description of suffixes for gender, mereological properties of nouns, scalar properties of adjectives and a variety of nominal suffixes expressing actions, measures or locations, as well as an integral Neo-Constructionist analysis of the syntactic structure of the resulting formations. Framed within a Nanosyntactic-oriented framework, this book sheds light on the nature of lexical categories and the components of the low syntactic structure of nouns and adjectives. The book will be useful both to researchers in Spanish linguistics or theoretical morphology and to advanced students of Spanish interested in learning more about the expressive devices that nouns and adjectives allow.

The ongoing migration 'crisis' in European countries (2015 to date) has fostered different stances and practices within European nation-states, ranging from xenophobia to solidarity. In this context, two contradictory discourses seem to coexist: the national racist discourse and the humanitarian, antiracist one. This volume brings together studies investigating diverse semiotic strategies through which liquid racism emerges, which consists of ambiguities and contradictory interpretations due to the fact that racist views infiltrate discourse intended as antiracist. The volume includes critical and pragmatic analyses of texts coming from various sources, such as news articles, parliamentary discourse, political cartoons, video clips, advertising campaigns based on personal stories, and jokes. It is an outcome of the research project "TRACE: Tracing Racism in Anti-raCist discoursE: A critical approach to European public speech on the migrant and refugee crisis" (HFRI-FM17-42, HFRI 2019-2022, Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation).

This book examines three controversial generalizations concerning wh-island effects in Chinese: argument and adjunct asymmetry, subject and object asymmetry, and D-linked and non-D-linked asymmetry. Experiments under the factorial definition of island effects reveal that: (1) both argument and adjunct wh-in-situ are sensitive to the wh-island, displaying no asymmetry; (2) subject wh-in-situ manifests a larger magnitude of island effects, whereas object wh-in-situ shows a smaller size due to the confounding of double name penalty, exhibiting a special pattern of asymmetry; (3) D-linked and non-D-linked who-in-situ evince no asymmetry, while D-linked and non-D-linked what-in-situ demonstrate a marginal asymmetry. Findings support the theory of covert wh-movement on the interpretation of Chinese wh-in-situ. The pattern of wh-island effects can be attributed to the violation of locality principles during wh-feature movement. This book is primarily tailored for researchers interested in the study of Chinese wh-questions and generative linguistics in the broad sense.

Pantomime is a unique form of communication, which we improvise "on the fly" to transmit information when unable to use language, for example during intercultural contacts or when the use of language is blocked or constrained, as in the case of some medical conditions or the game of charades. Pantomimic communication has been investigated from a number of perspectives, including neuropsychological, developmental and gesture research. Recently, pantomime has come under the attention of evolutionary linguistics as a strong candidate for a precursor of verbal communication. This volume brings together authors who are at the forefront of these studies, which challenge the notion that pantomime is merely a fallback mode of expression. This multidisciplinary journey traverses language evolution, cognitive science, cognitive semiotics, sign language linguistics, psychology and gesture studies to unveil the profound role that pantomime plays in human communication.

The textual heritage of Medieval Latin is one of the greatest reservoirs of human culture. Repertories list more than 16,000 authors from about 20 modern countries. Until now, there has been no introduction to this world in its full geographical extension. Forty contributors fill this gap by adopting a new perspective, making available to specialists (but also to the interested public) new materials and insights. The project presents an overview of Medieval (and post-medieval) Latin Literatures as a global phenomenon including both Europe and extra-European regions. It serves as an introduction to medieval Latin's complex and multi-layered culture, whose attraction has been underestimated until now. Traditional overviews mostly flatten specificities, yet in many countries medieval Latin literature is still studied with reference to the local history. Thus the first section presents 20 regional surveys, including chapters on authors and works of Latin Literature in Eastern, Central and Northern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. Subsequent chapters highlight shared patterns of circulation, adaptation, and exchange, and underline the appeal of medieval intermediality, as evidenced in manuscripts, maps, scientific treatises and iconotexts, and its performativity in narrations, theatre, sermons and music. The last section deals with literary "interfaces," that is motifs or characters that exemplify the double-sided or the long-term transformations of medieval Latin mythologemes in vernacular culture, both early modern and modern, such as the legends about King Arthur, Faust, and Hamlet.