The concept of possible worlds, originally introduced in philosophical logic, proves to be a productive tool when borrowed by literary theory to explain the notion of fictional worlds. Ruth Ronen develops a comparative reading of the use of possible worlds in philosophy and in literary theory. She suggests new criteria for the definition of fictionality; and through specific studies of domains within fictional worlds--events, objects, time and point of view--she proposes a radical rethinking of fictionality in general and fictional narrativity in particular.
Apposition in Contemporary English is the first full-length treatment of apposition. It provides detailed discussion of its linguistic characteristics and of its usage in various kinds of speech and writing, derived from the data of British and American computer corpora. Charles Meyer demonstrates the inadequacies of previous studies and argues that apposition is a grammatical relation realized by constructions having particular syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics, of which certain are dominant.
What is the place of language in human cognition? Do we sometimes think in natural language? Or is language for purposes of interpersonal communication only? Although these questions have been much debated in the past, in recent decades they have almost dropped from sight among those interested in the cognitive sciences. Language and Thought is intended to persuade such people to think again. It brings together essays by a distinguished interdisciplinary team of philosophers and psychologists, who discuss various ways in which language may be implicated in human cognition.
The essays in this volume are all analyses of prosody--primarily intonation and rhythm--and the role it plays in everyday conversation. Prosody emerges as a strategy deployed by interactants in the management of turn-taking and floor-holding; in the negotiation of conversational activities such as repair, assessments, announcements, reproaches and news receipts; and in the keying of the tone or modality of interactional sequences. The material studied is taken not from constructed laboratory data but from genuine English, German and Italian conversations.
Rajend Mesthrie examines the rise of a new variety of English among Indian migrant workers indentured on the plantations of Natal in South Africa. Considering the historical background to, and linguistic consequences of, language shift in an immigrant context, he draws significant parallels between second language acquisition and the processes of pidginization and creolization. South African Indian English is compared with other dialects in South Africa, with English in India, and with Englishes generally.
