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"Focus (Linguistics)"
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Explicit communication : Robyn Carston's pragmatics
\"This collection of essays brings about a current interdisciplinary debate on explicit communication. With Robyn Carston's pragmatics at the core of the discussion, special attention is drawn to linguistic underdeterminacy, the explicit/implicit divide and also to the construction or recruitment of concepts in on-line utterance comprehension, which is a particularly contentious area within the broader theme of the limits of explicitness in linguistic communication. Carston contributes with her current views and responds to some of the issues and criticisms raised\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Information structuring of spoken language from a cross-linguistic perspective
The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. The series considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language.
eBook
The expression of information structure
Information structure deals with the linguistic forms and techniques that support the integration of what is said into the current informational and attentional state of the addressee. This shows in categories like topic-comment structuring, focus to highlight expressions, marking of givenness and of presupposed information, and ways to indicate that the information provided is restricted. The book relates infor-mation structure to theoretical models of grammar, to computation and modelling and brings together what is known about the expression of information structure in human language with regard to its empirical investigation, its psycholinguistic aspects and the acquisition of information structure. Since the need to integrate what is said into the informational and attentional state of the addressee is central to all human communication, it is not surprising that all natural languages have developed devices to express information structural cate-gories. To illustrate this, the book also provides concrete and theory independent descriptions of the information structural encoding strategies of individual languages of different types . The book can be used as a textbook appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses; it also provides information for linguists that are not specialists in the field.
eBook
Focus Construction with kî ʾim in Biblical Hebrew
This study uses modern linguistic theory to analyze a frequently recurring syntactic phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible that has thus far resisted explanation: כי אם.
The combination of the two particles כי and אם produces a construction that is notoriously difficult to describe, analyze syntactically, and translate. Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew offer a dizzying variety of translations for this construction, including “that if,” “except,” “unless,” “but,” “but only,” and “surely,” among other possibilities. In this book, Grace J. Park provides a new approach that strives for greater precision and consistency in translation. Park argues that כי אם is used in three patterns: the “full focus” pattern, the “reduced focus” pattern, and the less common “non-focus” pattern. Her syntactic analysis of all 156 occurrences of the כי אם construction in the Bible lends greater clarity to the contested passages.
Drawing on recent linguistic research into the typology of clausal nominalization as well as previous work on contrastive focus, this innovative project provides important new insight into the syntax of Biblical Hebrew. It will be especially valuable for scholars seeking to translate כי אם more consistently and accurately.
eBook
Particles in German, English, and Beyond
Germanic languages have been recognized as having not only intensifying or focus particles, but also so-called modal particles. The relevant items are specialized discourse markers joined by characteristic syntactic properties.
eBook
The syntax of information-structural agreement
In this research monograph, Johannes Mursell discusses the syntactic impact of information-structural features on agreement. So far, the syntactic contribution of this type of feature has mostly been reduced to movement of topics or foci clause-initial position. Here, the author looks at a different phenomenon, syntactic agreement, and how this process can be dependent on information-structural properties. Based partly on original fieldwork from a typologically diverse set of languages, including Tagalog, Swahili, and Lavukaleve, it is argued that for most areas for which information-structural features have been discussed, it is possible to find cases where these features influence phi-feature agreement. The analysis is then extended to cases of Association with Focus, which does not involve phi-features but can still be accounted for with agreement of information-structural features. The book achieves two main goals: first it provides a uniform analysis for different constructions in unrelated languages. Second, it also gives a new argument that information-structural features should be treated as genuine syntactic features.
eBook
Handbook of Learning from Multiple Representations and Perspectives
In and out of formal schooling, online and off, today’s learners must consume and integrate a level of information that is exponentially larger and delivered through a wider range of formats and viewpoints than ever before. The Handbook of Learning from Multiple Representations and Perspectives provides a path for understanding the cognitive, motivational, and socioemotional processes and skills necessary for learners across educational contexts to make sense of and use information sourced from varying inputs. Uniting research and theory from education, psychology, literacy, library sciences, media and technology, and more, this forward-thinking volume explores the common concerns, shared challenges, and thematic patterns in our capacity to make meaning in an information-rich society.
eBook
The expression of information structure : a documentation of its diversity across Africa
This study concerns the interaction of 'focus' with the verbal system of Ejagham, an Ekoid Bantu language. In particular it concerns the multiple forms of the perfective and imperfective aspects. The Ejagham system differs from the tendency in Bantu systems. The verb forms in Ejagham have a 'constituent' focus form that sub-categorizes predicates (\"verbs\") with terms (\"nps\"), and an 'operator' focus form used whenever the verbal operator is within the scope of focus. Bantu languages commonly have a form used when the verbal complement falls within the scope of focus but another form for other cases. So Bantu languages tend to group predicates with verbal operators. In addition, Ejagham conflates assertive and contrastive focus, a distinction that is important in other Bantoid languages in the general vicinity of Ejagham but not in Ejagham.
eBook
Modal and Focus Particles in Sign Languages
Bringing together the research fields of sign language linguistics and information structure, this bookfocuses onthe realization of modal particles and focus particles in three European sign languages: German Sign Language, Sign Language of the Netherlands, and Irish Sign Language. As a cross-linguistic investigation based on a systematic methodological approach, thestudy analyzes the results particularly with regard to nonmanual features expressed by articulators such as the body, head, and face. The analyses of the data provide interesting insights into the syntax-prosody interface in sign languages and the interaction of syntax and prosody in general. Modal and focus particles have not been thoroughly investigated in sign languages. This volumepresents the first studyon this phenomenonand is thus an innovative contribution to the field. From a methodological and theoretical perspective, it draws onup-to-date linguistic tools and provides professionally elicited and annotated data. The bookaccounts for theresultswithin existing theoretical models. Given its specific focus on nonmanuals, the book contributes to recent debates on information structure and the syntax-prosody interface and will be of special interest to both sign and spoken language linguists.
eBook