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Corpus-Based Contrastive Studies of English and Chinese
This book is concerned with cross-linguistic contrast of major grammatical categories in English and Chinese, two most important yet genetically different world languages. This genetic difference has resulted in many subsidiary differences that are, among other things, related to grammar. Compared with typologically related languages, cross-linguistic contrast of English and Chinese is more challenging yet promising. The main theme of this book lies in its focus on cross-linguistic contrast of aspect-related grammatical categories, or, grammatical categories that contribute to aspectual meaning – both situation aspect at the semantic level and viewpoint aspect at the grammatical level – in English and Chinese.
The unique strength of this volume lies in that it is first corpus-based book contrasting English and Chinese. Given that the state of the art in language studies is to use corpora, the significance of the marriage between contrastive studies and the corpus methodology in this book is not to be underestimated.
1. Introduction 2. Aspect Marking in English and Chinese 3. Temporal Adverbials and Telicity in English and Chinese 4. Quantifying Constructions in English and Chinese 5. Passives in English and Chinese 6. Negation in English and Chinese: Variants and Variations 7. Negation in English and Chinese: Special Usages 8. Challenge and Promise, and the Way Forward
Richard Xiao is Senior Lecturer in English and Chinese Studies at Edge Hill University, UK. He has published extensively in corpus linguistics as well as contrastive and translation studies. Richard’s recent books include Aspect in Mandarin Chinese (2004), Corpus-Based Language Studies (2006), and A Frequency Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese (2009).
Tony McEnery is Professor of English Linguistics and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University, UK. As a world renowned corpus linguist, he has published numerous books including Corpus Linguistics (1996/2001), Aspect in Mandarin Chinese (2004), Corpus-Based Language Studies (2006), and Corpora in Linguistics (2010).
\"This book is no doubt a fascinating contribution to corpus linguistics, linguistic theory, and a cross-linguistic analysis of aspect-related grammatical categories of the two typologically dissimilar languages.\" - Chinese Language and Dialogue, Vol 1:2 (2010)
eBook
Semantic Traces of Social Interaction from Antiquity to Early Modern Times
There are many methods that use historical semantic analysis as the key to unlocking an understanding of past epochs, concepts in the humanities, and socio-historical events, including: conceptual history, lexicometry and socio-historical discourse semantics. As diverse as these approaches are, stemming as they do from varying academic traditions, together they have proven that language is more than just a passive medium to transport meaning. Words and their meanings on the one hand, and the changes in those meanings on the other, influence socio-cultural structures, orders of knowledge, ideologies, and mentalities. In turn, socio-political achievements, ideological orientation, novel ways of thinking, and modifications of scientific knowledge and cultural practices inform and change the way words are used, leading to neologisms and semantic shifts as well as to expanded or narrowed meanings. Tracing the changes in the meaning of conversatio and its modern language derivatives, this book illustrates the productivity of historical semantic analysis for cultural studies.
eBook
The semantics of word formation and lexicalization
In this book, the focus is on the semantic aspect of the formation of new words rather than on generating the form as is more traditional. Each chapter concentrates on a specific question about a theoretical concept or a word formation process in a particular language and adopts a theoretical framework that is appropriate to the study of this question.
Book
Ten lectures on event structure in a network theory of language
In Ten Lectures on Event Structure in a Network Theory of Language, Nikolas Gisborne offers an account of verb meaning from the perspective of a model that treats language structure as part of the wider cognitive network.
eBook
The semantics and pragmatics of honorification : register and social meaning
This book explores the semantics and pragmatics of honorifics, expressions that indicate the degree of formality that a speaker feels is required in interacting with another person. Although these expressions are found in many languages worldwide, this volume is the first to approach the area from the perspective of formal semantics and pragmatics. Elin McCready treats honorifics - and expressions with honorific import - as carriers of expressive content that contributes either directly or indirectly to a register corresponding to the current formality of the speech situation. The analysis is applied to a variety of empirical examples, including utterance and argument honorifics in Japanese, Thai, and several other languages. It is proposed that the distinct strategies that different languages use for honorification have implications for the grammaticality of certain combination of honorifics. The volume also explores the connections between honorification and a range of theoretical issues in social meaning and the expression of gender. It will hence appeal not only to researchers in formal semantics and pragmatics, but also to sociolinguists, anthropological linguists, and philosophers.
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Stative inquiries : causes, results, experiences, and locations
This monograph studies stative predicates from a neo-constructionist perspective and integrates them in a comprehensive theory of event and argument structure. It focuses on two sets of stative verbs: govern-type verbs and object experiencer psychological verbs. For govern-verbs, it shows how notions such as causativity and resultativity can also be ingredients of stative predicates and be derived syntactically. The consequences of this proposal are further pursued in a crosslinguistic investigation of adjectival passives, which are stative predicates of sorts. For object-experiencer psychological verbs, it is shown that their Experiencer theta-role can and should be derived as an aspectual entailment mediated by prepositional structure. In defending this view, this monograph reveals a syntactic parallelism between location verbs and object-experiencer psychological verbs in many languages that has hitherto gone unnoticed. This book will primarily appeal to researchers interested in lexical aspect and its connection to morphosyntax.
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Give Constructions across Languages
This cognitive contrastive study of ten languages (Chinese, Dalabon, English, French, Spanish, Romanian, Kurdish, Khmer, Polish, Tibetan) focuses on the concept of giving from six main points of view, namely argument structure, lexical semantics and event structure, role marking in the three argument construction and in other constructions, lexicalization, grammaticalization and constructionalization of the verb from a cognitive construction grammar point of view, and central and extended meanings. It is proposed that a continuum approach to grammar and lexicon is needed in order to describe the typological and historical facts. The volume argues for a concrete and abstract transfer 'cluster model' involving coverage of lexical and grammatical extension or bleaching phenomena and that the semantic extensions (metaphorical and otherwise) exploit various portions of this schema. The volume is deeply anchored in the Cognitive Construction Grammar theoretical movement, and proposes analyses of constructional phenomena to illustrate a grammar to lexicon continuum, in synchrony and diachrony: language change, grammaticalization chains, constructionalization analysis, and an invariant hypothesis of giving as a basic activity in human cognition.
eBook