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Over the last forty years, the functionalist approach to linguistic description and explanation has given rise to several major schools of thought that share two crucial assumptions: (i) form is not independent of meaning/function or language use; and (ii) linguistic description and explanation need to take into account the communicative function of language. This volume offers readers interested in functional linguistics a selected sample of studies that jointly prove the efficacy of the analytical tools and procedures broadly accepted within the functionalist tradition in order to investigate language and discourse, with special focus on key pragmatic/discourse notions such as contextualization, grammaticalisation, reference, politeness, (in-)directness, discourse markers, speech acts, subjective evaluation and sentiment analysis in texts, among others. In addition, this volume offers specific corpus-based techniques for the objective contextualisation of linguistic data, which is crucial given the central role allotted to context in both functional linguistics and pragmatics/discourse analysis.
This edited volume showcases new work on discourse analysis by big names in the field and promising early-career researchers. Arising from the latest in the series of IWoDA workshops in Santiago de Compostela, it provides novel insights into both the explicit and the implicit characteristics of discourse as used in verbal interaction. Discourse markers, as their name indicates, are among the explicit signals of coherence, while discourse relations may be either explicit or implicit. Similarly, the discourse used for purposes of evaluation, stance-taking and interpersonal engagement is either overt or covert, as is also true of the expression of emotions and empathy. This, in general terms, is the challenging terrain into which the contributors to this volume have ventured. The book combines theoretical issues with a practical orientation, comparing languages, analysing different registers, studying the openings of Skype conversations, and much more besides; it will prove highly relevant for postgraduate and advanced practitioners of discourse analysis, interaction studies, semantics and pragmatics.
This collection reflects on developments in the field of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as embodied in the work of Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, highlighting his diverse contributions to the field from theoretical and applied perspectives. The book surveys Matthiessen’s academic career and illustrates the myriad ways in which his work has reverberated through to current innovations in SFL research. The book also exhibits his theoretical contributions to major linguistic topics and his influence on the development of SFL. Written by some of the world’s foremost scholars in the field, chapters cover such topics as theories of SFL and its applications in different domains as well as the developmental trajectories of SFL in major geographic areas. Addressing the key issues in SFL through the lens of Matthiessen’s career, this book is an accessible resource for students and scholars in systemic functional linguistics, as well as those interested in the systemic functional approach in related areas within linguistics.
How are evidential functions distinguished by means other than grammatical paradigms, i.e. by function words and other lexical units? And how inventories of such means can be compared across languages (against an account also of grammatical means used to mark information source)? This book presents an attempt at supplying a comparative survey of such inventories by giving detailed “evidential profiles” for a large part of European languages: Continental Germanic, English, French, Basque, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Modern Greek, and Ibero-Romance languages, such as Catalán, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish. Each language is treated in a separate chapter, and their profiles are based on a largely unified set of concepts based on function and/or etymological provenance. The profiles are preceded by a chapter which clarifies the theoretical premises and methodological background for the format followed in the profiles. The concluding chapter presents a synthesis of findings from these profiles, including areal biases and the formulation of methodological problems that call for further research.
Contrastive studies have experienced a dramatic revival in the last decades. By combining the methodological advantages of computer corpus linguistics and the possibility of contrasting texts in two or more languages, the structure and use of languages can be explored with greater accuracy, detail and empirical strength than before. The approach has also proved to have fruitful practical applications in a number of areas such as language teaching, lexicography, translation studies and computer-aided translation. This volume contains twelve studies comparing linguistic phenomena in English and seven other languages. The topics range from comparisons of specific lexical categories and word combinations to syntactic constructions and discourse phenomena such as cohesion and thematic structure. The studies highlight similarities and differences in the use, semantics and functions of the compared items, as well as the emergence of new meanings and language change. The emphasis varies from purely linguistic studies to those focusing on practical applications.
This book aims to inform scholars working in the domain of natural language generation (man-machine interface, automatic translation, text generation) about the most recent advances in the field whether in the domain of grammar theories or discourse planning, ie how to structure the message in such a way that the reader can easily follow the writer's train of thought. It is in particular in this domain, discourse planning, that significant advances has been achieved during the last five years.
"This volume presents the proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Automated Natural Language Generation held in Castel Ivano, Trento, Italy, April 5-7, 1992. Besides an invited lecture by Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, a well-known researcher in computer animation, on creating and visualizing speech and emotion, the volume includes the 17 thouroughly reviewed papers accepted for presentation, selected out of the submissions to the Workshop, as well as 11 statements contributed to panels on multilinguality and generation or extending language generation to multiple media. The accepted papers by leading researchers from Japan, North America and Europe fall in sections on generator system architecture, issues in realisation, issues in discourse structure, and beyond traditional generation."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.
Articles included in this compilation represent functional approaches to literary analysis. Most of these papers were presented at the Sixteenth International Systemics Congress held in Helsinki, Finland, in 1989. The aim of the congress was to establish dialogue between various functional approaches to the theoretical study of language, to educational linguistics, as well as to the study of literary language. The literary analysis papers included in this compilation range from discussions of literary pragmatics, to detailed systemic-functional analyses of literary texts. Papers included are: "Literary Genre and History: Questions from a Literary Pragmaticist for Socio-Semioticians" (Roger D. Sell); "Prose Dialogue and Discourse" (Karen Malcolm); "Dialogue and Discourse in a Nigerian English Discourse" (Femi Akindele); "Semantic Options in the Transitivity System: An Example of Textual Analysis" (Julia Lavid); "Variation in Narrative Structure: A Simple Text vs. an Innovative Work of Art" (Martina Bjorklund and Tuija Virtanen); "Phonological Meanings in Literary Prose Texts and their Translations" (Eija Ventola). (JL)
Vol. 1 contains papers delivered at the 2d Karpacz Conference on Contrastive Linguistics, 1971.