Studies on the syntactic consequences of event type in languages have shown that Aktionsart plays a role in Universal Grammar. This book contributes to the exploration of the syntax/semantics interface by presenting a thorough comparison of event and predicate types in English and Spanish. The mapping between event and syntactic predicate types, including detransitives, is given a minimalist account based on the functional categories that embed event features and on a careful analysis of the features checked by objects.

Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing V: Selected papers from RANLP 2007

This volume brings together revised versions of a selection of papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on “Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing” (RANLP) held in Borovets, Bulgaria, 27–29 September 2007.

This volume brings together a collection of 18 papers that look into the expression of modality in the grammars of natural languages, with an emphasis on its manifestations in naturally occurring discourse. Though the individual contributions reflect a diversity of languages, of synchronic and diachronic foci, and of theoretical orientations — all within the broad domain of functional linguistics — they nonetheless converge around a number of key issues: the relationship between 'mood' and 'modality'; the delineation of modal categories and their nomenclature; 

Contextualizing the Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Issues and Tensions

Among the growing number of publications on promoting English as an International Language (EIL), little has been written on the complexities that the EIL paradigm has brought to the teaching and learning of English in the classroom. This edited book seeks to address this deficit in the literature by bringing together narratives of the realities that EIL practitioners encountered in their diverse teaching contexts, including Indonesia, the Pacific islands, USA, and Australia; the struggles, tensions, dilemmas, and quests of living as EIL practitioners in specific teaching contexts and wider English communities in general are all explored in this book.

An Investigation of Various Linguistic Changes in Chinese and Naxi

The comparative analysis of historical linguistics focuses on reconstructing ancient patterns based on diachronic records and typological data from several languages or dialects in a language group. The ultimate aim of the comparative reconstruction which requires significant cross-linguistic observation and theoretical reasoning is to demonstrate the historical process of language changes.