Bøker i Contemporary Studies in Descriptive Linguistics-serien

Following two major waves of immigration after World War II, the Bangladeshi community in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets is now one of the largest in the Bangladeshi diaspora, counting some 65,000 people. This is the first in-depth study of language and language-use within this Bangladeshi community. Based on a corpus of spontaneous speech data collected within the area, it provides the reader with an overview of the linguistic characteristics of ¿Bengali-English¿ as well as patterns of language-use. This book focuses on three areas: first, following the tradition of similar studies of the language of minority groups, an analysis of Bengali-English morphosyntax provides a detailed description of its morphosyntactic properties and the different developmental stages learners pass through. Second, a sociolinguistic analysis of the influence of social and psychological factors on the language and its speakers is presented. And last, based on quantitative survey data, and supported by qualitative data obtained through ethnographic interviews, the study evaluates the issues of identity and ethnolinguistic vitality within the Bangladeshi community.

This book combines a social constructionist view of academic writing with a pedagogical orientation seeking to explore the dialogic relationship between the culture of academic discourse communities and their rhetoric, and provide a comprehensive analysis of variation across disciplines, genres and national intellectual cultures. The analysis focuses on the rhetorical organisation of research genres and the resources that convey authors¿ epistemic and attitudinal stance. The findings form the basis for the design of socio-culturally oriented learning materials for the teaching of writing in the disciplines and the development of academic literacies.

Variations in speech melody (intonation) can be used to express different meanings (e.g. question vs. statement, friendliness). Yet, intonational information is hardly used in present-day linguistic models. When intonational information is used, it is mostly based on introspection rather than on empirical investigation; almost exclusively, a one-to-one relation between accent types and semantic function is assumed. This book focuses on an empirical investigation of thematic contrast in German. Thematic contrast has received considerable attention in semantics because sentences with contrastive themes can be used to imply propositions of various kinds without saying them explicitly. In this book, first an acoustic comparison between sentences produced in contrastive and non-contrastive contexts is described. Intonational realisation is quantified in terms of the height and position of tonal targets. The perceptual reality of different productions and the relevance of different acoustic cues are tested by means of rating experiments. Finally, the data are prosodically annotated by a group of linguists to explore the validity and explanatory power of different accent categories for contrastive and non-contrastive themes in German.

This corpus-based study investigates the use of nominalization in English translations of Chinese literary prose by analysing three versions of the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber. This book provides a comprehensive look at nominalization in English translations of Chinese prose and encourages further study into nominalization in translation.

This edited collection explores an area of linguistics referred to as 'the method of exceptions and their correlations'. Exceptions to linguistic rules are studied as clues to understanding and improving the original rule. Topics include passive, irregular verbs, morphology, phonology and more, in languages such as English, Arabic and Russian.

Global English and Arabic

Offers a view of research into interdisciplinarity, language and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by providing an overview of teaching proposals within a university context. This title address themes that are crucial to the demands of modern society.

Discursive Constructions around Terrorism in the People's Daily (China) and The Sun (UK) before and after 9.11

Describes the grammatical system of modality in Japanese in terms of the form-function relationship within the scope of a framework based on the European school of modality. This title deals with the modal system and its constituents in Japanese, accommodating all the grammatical means of modariti in the Nihongo bunpou (Japanese grammar system).

Contrasting Meaning in Languages of the East and West

Addresses language learner autonomy, both as a theoretical construct and in relation to areas of application such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the European Language Portfolio (ELP), teacher training, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), and minority language provision.