Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Argument Structure: Implications for Learnability offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on argument structure and its role in language acquisition. Much contemporary work in linguistics and psychology assumes that argument structure is strongly constrained by a set of universal principles, and that these principles are innate, providing children with certain bootstrapping strategies that help them hone in on basic aspects of the syntax and lexicon of their language.
The Linguistics of Laughter examines what speakers try to achieve by producing "laughter-talk" (the talk preceding and eliciting an episode of laughter) and, using abundant examples from language corpora, what hearers are signaling when they produce laughter.
In particular, Alan Partington focuses on the tactical use of laughter-talk to achieve specific rhetorical, and strategic, ends: for example, to construct an identity, to make an argumentative point, to threaten someone else's face or save one's own. Although laughter and humor are by no means always related, the book also considers the implications these corpus-based observations may have about humor theory in general.
There is a 'written language bias' in the language sciences, particularly in linguistics. Within the discipline of linguistics, models and theories of language have been developed that are strongly dependent on long-time traditions of dealing with writing and written language. This legacy is still alive in modern, mainstream theoretical linguistics. As a consequence a paradox arises: there is an almost unanimous agreement on the absolute primacy of spoken language, yet language is explored from theoretical and methodological points of departure that are ultimately derived from concerns with cultivating, standardising and teaching forms of written language.
This is the fullest account ever published of Latin suffixes in English. It explores the rich variety of English words formed by the addition of one or more Latin suffixes, such as ial, -able, -ability, -ible, and -id. It traces the histories of over 3,000 words and reveals the range of derivational patterns in Indo-European, Latin, and English. It makes an important contribution to the history of English and Latin morphology and etymology, as well as to the history of suffixal derivation in Indo-European.
The initial impetus for this volume arose from a belief that there were many important issues concerned with Aboriginal Australia which were not known to a wide enough audience. Over the last twenty years a tremendous amount of work has been carried out on the languages of Aboriginal Australia.
