Have we always "sworn like sailors"? Has creative cursing developed because we can't just slug people when they make us angry? And if such verbal aggression is universal, why is it that some languages (Japanese, for instance) supposedly do not contain any nasty words?
This is a true Collector’s find for those bonsaist and gardener who want to own the finest andrarest pieces of gardening history. It is similar to owning the fabled artist’s own Secret BonsaiTechnique Notebook. This one-of-a-kind authoritative guide to the ancient art of potted miniature trees and is simply a bonsaist collector's item that gives the feeling of being directly in the workshop with the Japanese Bonsai Master Kimura. T
This volume contains a collection of writings that focuses on semantic phenomena and their interpretation in the analysis of the language of a learner. The variety of phenomena that are addressed is substantial: temporal aspect and tense, specificity, quantification, scope, finiteness, focus structure, and focus particles. The number of languages in which these phenomena are investigated is very large as well: Dutch, English, German, Inuktitut, Italian, Japanese, and Polish, to name a few.
The selected contributions of this volume focus on various issues related to second language pedagogy and second language acquisition in the Japanese context. Part I covers such topics as discourse pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics in language teaching; the instruction of conversation through training in story telling skills; task activities as a means for grammarization in grammar teaching; the development of a computerized speaking test and a proficiency scale for EFL learners; and the social aspects of the language teacher expertise.
