Everyday language use overflows with discourse-pragmatic features. Their frequency, form and function can vary greatly across social groups and change dramatically over time. And yet these features have not figured prominently in studies of language variation and change. The Str…
The loss of NC has long been attributed to external factors. This study readdresses this issue and provides evidence for the failure of certain external factors to account for the observed decline and ultimate disappearance of NC in Standard English. A d.
Beyond Narrative Coherence reconsiders the way we understand and work with narratives. Even though narrators tend to strive for coherence, they also add complexity, challenge canonical scripts, and survey lives by telling highly perplexing and contradictory stories. Many narrati…
This chapter addresses how concepts of narrative and narration have been used in theories of cultural trauma. My point of departure is an article by Wulf Kansteiner and Harald Weilnböck, where they criticize the concept of cultural trauma or what they call the paradigm of "decon…
This paper proposes an integrated account of the formal and functional non-uniformity exhibited by sound-symbolic words based on a hierarchy of lexical iconicity (i.e., iconicity of words). It is argued that the more iconic a vocalized sign is, the less strongly it is constraine…
The interactive stance: meaning for conversation
This text presents one of the first attempts at developing a precise, grammatically rooted, theory of conversation motivated by data from real conversations. It argues that the right way to construe grammar is as a system that characterizes types of talk in interaction.
This book brings together researchers in linguistics, computer science, psychology and cognitive science to investigate how motion is encoded in language. The book is divided into two parts. Part I considers the parameters at play in motion encoding (including directed motion) b…
The volume brings together a well-selected collection of twelve articles providing a comprehensive and very informative summary of contemporary work on lexical blending. It combines theoretically informed descriptions of a variety of languages and a number of contributions with …
"This volume explores the expression of the concepts count and mass in human language and probes the complex relation between seemingly incontrovertible aspects of meaning and their varied grammatical realizations across languages. In English, count nouns are those that can be c…
This book, based on revised papers originally delivered at the VII International Systemic Functional Workshop in Valencia in 1995, explores some of the choices open to speakers and writers for the expression of meaning in different socio-cultural contexts. Many of the papers dra…
Series Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Clark University.
