Vocabulary richness, including lexical diversity and use of rare words, has an important role in assessing proficiency, diagnosing progress and testing theory in the study of language development. This book first reviews different methods for quantifying how vocabulary is deployed in spontaneous speech and writing, and then introduces an alternative approach which can assess overall lexical diversity, measure morphology development and compare the development of different word classes.

Extra-grammatical morphology is a hitherto neglected area of research, highly marginalised because of its irregularity and unpredictability. Yet many neologisms in English are formed by means of extra-grammatical mechanisms, such as abbreviation, blending and reduplication, which therefore deserve both greater attention and more systematic study. This book analyses such phenomena.

The general stereotype regarding interaction between American Sign Language and English is a model of oversimplification: ASL signers are direct and English speakers are indirect. Jack Hoza’s study It’s Not What You Sign, It’s How You Sign It: Politeness in American Sign Language upends this common impression through an in-depth comparison of the communication styles between these two language communities.

The Linguist offers its readers a wide range of articles that are of interest to anyone and everyone working with languages. It features job ads for linguists, as well as an IT column on websites that are of interest or relevant to professional linguists. It also includes popular regular sections such as lists of IoL events, book reviews, a section on opinion and comment as well as news items. No matter what your field is, The Linguist is informative, incisive, relevant and thus a must for every linguist.

Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse

Written in readable, vivid, non-technical prose, this book presents the highly respected scholarly research that forms the foundation for Deborah Tannen's best-selling books about the role of language in human relationships. It provides a clear framework for understanding how ordinary conversation works to create meaning and establish relationships. A significant theoretical and methodological contribution to both linguistic and literary analysis, it uses transcripts of tape-recorded conversation to demonstrate that everyday conversation is made of features that are associated with literary discourse: repetition, dialogue, and details that create imagery.