Linguistics

Advice, defined as a recommendation for action in response to a problem, is a common form of interpersonal support and influence. Indeed, the advice we give and receive from others can be highly consequential, not only affecting us as recipients and advisors but also shaping outcomes for relationships, groups, and organizations. Some of those consequences are positive, as when advice promotes individual problem solving or enhances workgroup productivity. Yet advice can also hide ulterior motives, threaten identity, damage relationships, and promote inappropriate action. The Oxford Handbook of Advice provides a broad perspective on how advice succeeds and fails, systematically reviewing and synthesizing theory and research on advice from multiple disciplines, such as communication, psychology, applied linguistics, business, law, and medicine. Some chapters examine advice at different levels of analysis, focusing on advisor and recipient roles, advising interactions and relationships, and advice as a resource and connection in groups and networks. Other chapters address advice in particular types of personal relationships (e.g., romantic and family) and professional contexts (e.g., workplace, health, education, and therapy). Authors also consider cultural differences, advice online, and the ethics of advising. For scholars concerned with supportive communication, interpersonal influence, decision making, social networks, and related communication processes at work, at home, and in society at large, the Handbook offers historical perspective, contemporary theoretical framing, methodological recommendations, and directions for future research. The authors also emphasize practical application, offering clear, concise, and relevant “advice for advising” based on theory and research.

The Oxford Handbook of African American Language (OHAAL) provides readers with a wide range of analyses of both traditional and contemporary sociolinguistic research on language use in African American communities. OHAAL is organized into seven parts: Origins and Historical Perspectives; Lects and Variation; Structure and Description; Child Language Acquisition and Development; Education; Language in Society; and Language and Identity. The OHAAL chapters “interact” with one another as contributors frequently refer the reader to further elaboration on and references to related issues and connect their own research to related topics in other chapters to create dialogue about African American Language (AAL), or African American (Vernacular) English, thus affirming the need for collaborative thinking about issues in AAL research. Though OHAAL does not and cannot include every area of research, it is meant to provide suggestions for future work on traditional (e.g., Gullah and sociohistorical origins) and lesser studied areas (e.g., regional variation/heterogeneity) as well as controversial areas (e.g., Education and Ebonics) by highlighting a need for collaborative perspectives and innovative thinking while reasserting the need for better research and communication in areas thought to be resolved.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of current research in African languages, drawing on insights from anthropological linguistics, typology, historical and comparative linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Africa is believed to host at least one-third of the world’s languages, usually classified into four phyla—Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan—which are then subdivided into further families and subgroupings. This volume explores all aspects of research in the field, beginning with chapters that cover the major domains of grammar and comparative approaches. Later parts provide overviews of the phyla and subfamilies, alongside grammatical sketches of eighteen representative African languages of diverse genetic affiliation. The volume additionally explores multiple other topics relating to African languages and linguistics, with a particular focus on extralinguistic issues: language, cognition, and culture, including color terminology and conversation analysis; language and society, including language contact and endangerment; language and history; and language and orature.

The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics contains thirty-nine articles on a broad range of topics in applied linguistics written by a diverse group of contributors. Its goal is to provide a comprehensive survey of the field, the many connections among its various sub-disciplines, and the likely directions of its future development. The book addresses a broad audience: applied linguists; educators and other scholars working in language acquisition, language learning, language planning, teaching, and testing; and linguists concerned with the applications of their work. The volume systematically encompasses the major areas of applied linguistics and draws from a wide range of disciplines such as education, language policy, bi- and multi-lingualism, literacy, language and gender, psycholinguistics/cognition, language and computers, discourse analysis, language and concordinances, ecology of language, pragmatics, translation, psycholinguistics and cognition, and many other fields. This second edition includes five new articles, and the remaining articles have been revised and updated to give a clear picture of the state of applied linguistics.

Arabic is one of the world’s largest languages, spoken natively by about 300 million speakers. It is by a large margin the largest language in Africa (nearly 200 million speakers), and one of the biggest in Asia (120 million). It has been estimated to be the fifth largest language in the world in terms of native speakers. Strength of numbers alone guarantees it communicative centrality in the world language system. This Handbook reflects the full breadth of research on Arabic Linguistics in the West, covering topics such as pidgins and creoles, Arabic second language acquisition, loanwords, Arabic dialects, codeswitching, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and Arabic lexicography. The Handbook brings together different approaches and scholarly traditions, an invitation to the reader to explore the many faceted world of Arabic Linguistics. The articles in this volume expertly explore the nature of the house of Arabic from many angles. Many argue for specific points of view, others give descriptions of synoptic breadth, while others provide exhaustive overviews of the state of the art. The parts may or may not come together to describe a common structure; they do provide blueprints for a better understanding of it.

The Oxford Handbook of Case provides a comprehensive account of research on case and the morphological and syntactic phenomena associated with it. The semantic roles and grammatical relations indicated by case are fundamental to the whole system of language and have long been a central concern of descriptive and theoretical linguistics. The book opens with an synoptic overview of the main lines of research in the field, which sets out the main issues, challenges, and debates. Articles then report on the state of play in theoretical, typological, diachronic, and psycholinguistic research. They assess cross-linguistic work on case and case systems and evaluate a variety of theoretical approaches. They also examine current issues and debates from historical, areal, socio-linguistic, and psycholinguistic perspectives. The final part of the book consists of a set of overview articles of case systems representative of some of the world's major language families.

The term "Chinese Linguistics" in the title of this Handbook refers to research done on the languages of China, both theoretical and applied. Chinese Linguistics has a long and honored tradition, starting with philosophical discussions on the nature of names by Confucius. Several empirical investigations in Chinese Linguistics followed the philosophical discussions on the nature of language in the Confucian tradition, each a landmark in its own way in ancient China. This Handbook contains eight sections: (1) history, (2) languages and dialects, (3) language contact, (4) morphology, (5) syntax, (6) phonetics and phonology, (7) socio-cultural aspects, and (8) neuro-psychological aspects. It provides not only a diachronic view of how languages evolve, but also a synchronic view of how languages in contact enrich each other by borrowing new words, calquing loan translation, and even developing new syntactic structures. Traditional linguistic studies of grammar and phonology are joined with empirical evidence from psycholinguistics and cognitive neurosciences. In addition to research on the Chinese language and its major dialect groups, this Handbook covers studies on sign languages and non-Sinitic languages, such as the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan. This is the first Handbook that deals with Chinese Linguistics from a broad multidisciplinary perspective. It is a combined effort from scholars working on this field in different parts of the world, including Greater China, Japan, Korea, North America, and Europe.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of cognitive linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied. It starts with a set of articles discussing different conceptual phenomena that are recognized as key concepts in cognitive linguistics: prototypicality, metaphor, metonymy, embodiment, perspectivization, mental spaces, etc. A second set of articles deals with cognitive grammar, construction grammar, and word grammar, which, each in their own way, bring together the basic concepts into a particular theory of grammar and a specific model for the description of grammatical phenomena. Special attention is given to the interrelation between cognitive and construction grammar. A third set of articles compares cognitive linguistics with other forms of linguistic research (functional linguistics, autonomous linguistics, and the history of linguistics), thus aiming to provide a better grip on the position of cognitive linguistics within the landscape of linguistics at large. The remaining articles apply these basic notions to various more specific linguistic domains, illustrating how cognitive linguistics deals with the traditional linguistic subdomains (phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, text, and discourse), and demonstrating how it handles linguistic variation and change. Finally, the book considers its importance in the domain of applied linguistics, and looks at interdisciplinary links with research fields such as philosophy and psychology.

The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Syntax serves two functions: it will provide a general and theoretical introduction to comparative syntax, its methodology, and its relation to other domains of linguistic inquiry; and it will provide a systematic selection of the best comparative work available on those language groups and families where substantial progress has been achieved. Comparison across formal languages is an essential part of formal linguistics. The study of closely related varieties has proven extremely useful in comparing differences that might otherwise appear unrelated, and has helped to identify the core principles of Universal Grammar.

Compositionality is a key concept in linguistics, the philosophy of mind and language, and throughout the cognitive sciences. Understanding how it works is a central element of syntactic and semantic analysis, and a challenge for models of cognition. In this book, scholars from every relevant field report on the state of the art in all aspects of the subject. They reveal the connections in different lines of research, and highlight its most challenging problems and opportunities. The force and justification of compositionality have long been contentious. First proposed by Frege as the notion that the meaning of an expression is generally determined by the meaning and syntax of its parts, it has since been deployed as a constraint on the relation between theories of syntax and semantics, as a means of analysis, and, more recently, as underlying the structures of representational systems such as computer programs and neural architectures. This Handbook explores these and many other dimensions of one of the most exciting fields in the study of language and cognition.

This book presents a comprehensive review of theoretical work on the linguistics and psycholinguistics of compound words and combines it with a series of surveys of compounding in a variety of languages from a wide range of language families. Compounding is an effective way to create and express new meanings. Compound words are segmentable into their constituents so that new items can often be understood on first presentation. However, as keystone, keynote, and keyboard, and breadboard, sandwich-board, and mortarboard show, the relation between components is often far from straightforward. The question then arises as to how far compound sequences are analysed at each encounter and how far they are stored in the brain as single lexical items. The nature and processing of compounds thus offer an unusually direct route to how language operates in the mind, as well as providing the means of investigating important aspects of morphology and lexical semantics, and insights to child language acquisition and the organization of the mental lexicon. The book reports on the state of the art in these and other central topics, including the classification and typology of compounds, and approaches to cross-linguistic research on the subject from generative and non-generative, and synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

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This handbook presents a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry. This volume is divided into five sections. The first section highlights the fundamental assumptions shared by all constructionist approaches; the second describes the particular frameworks in which the notion of constructions plays a central role; the third illustrates how constructionist approaches can be used for the analysis of all types of (morpho)syntactic phenomena from the lexicon?syntax cline; the fourth discusses the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic underpinnings of Construction Grammar; and the final section considers the relation of Construction Grammar to language variation and change. The handbook also traces the history of Construction Grammar and explains its distinction from Chomskyan Mainstream Generative Grammar.

This handbook introduces the field of corpus phonology: the employment of purpose-built phonologically annotated spoken language corpora for studying a wide range of phonological and phonetic phenomena. These include speakers’ and listeners’ acquisition and knowledge of the sound system of their native language and foreign languages as well as the laws underlying those systems. The field of corpus phonology combines methods and theoretical approaches from phonology, both diachronic and synchronic, phonetics, corpus linguistics, speech technology, information technology and computer science, mathematics, and statistics. The book is divided into four parts: the first deals with the design characteristics, creation, transcription, exploitation, and archiving of phonological corpora; the second presents current corpus-based research in phonetics, phonology, language variation, and language acquisition. In Part III, the most widely used tools for corpus compilation and exploitation are introduced, and Part IV contains descriptions of ten currently available phonological corpora in various languages.

This handbook is intended as a companion volume to the Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP, 2009), aiming to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology. It examines theoretical and definitional matters, formal and semantic issues, interdisciplinary connections and detailed descriptions of derivational processes in a wide range of language families. It presents the reader with the current state of the art in the study of derivational morphology. The handbook begins with an overview and a consideration of definitional matters, distinguishing derivation from inflection on the one hand and compounding on the other. From a formal perspective, the handbook treats affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation, etc.), conversion, reduplication, root and pattern and other templatic processes, as well as prosodic and subtractive means of forming new words. From a semantic perspective, it looks at the processes that form various types of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, as well as evaluatives and the rarer processes that form function words. Chapters are devoted to issues of theory, methodology, the historical development of derivation, and to child language acquistion, sociolinguistic, experimental and psycholinguistic approaches. The second half of the book surveys derivation in fifteen language families that are widely dispersed in terms of both geographical location and typological characteristics. It ends with a consideration of both areal tendencies in derivation and the issue of universals.

This handbook provides a thorough and systematic investigation of the question of how we come to know a language. Researchers from all over the world explore the leading research questions within developmental linguistics, which include: What does the newborn child bring to the task of language acquisition? What information must the child extract from her linguistic input? And how does biological maturation interact with the child’s developing linguistic abilities? In the main body of the handbook, each chapter addresses a single area of grammatical knowledge, such as syllable structure, negation, or binding theory, and begins with an overview of the fundamental generalizations that guide current linguistic analyses and the features of grammatical representation that these generalizations entail. This is followed by a consideration of language learnability; a review of the relevant acquisition literature organized according to target language, age range of the child, and research methodology; and, finally, a discussion of a series of broader questions, such as: Do the experimental findings that were reviewed in the chapter favour a particular approach to the logical problem of language learnability? In what ways, if any, does the child’s knowledge surpass the information directly available from the input? In what ways can innate structure make the input more informative? Likewise, are there ways in which the child’s knowledge seems more limited than expected, given the richness of the available input?

This handbook is the first volume to provide a comprehensive, in-depth, and balanced discussion of ellipsis phenomena, whereby a perceived interpretation is fuller than would be expected based solely on the presence of linguistic forms. Natural language abounds in these apparently incomplete expressions, such as I laughed but Ed didn’t, in which the final portion of the sentence, the verb ‘laugh’, remains unpronounced but is still understood. The range of phenomena involved raise general and fundamental questions about the workings of grammar, but also constitute a treasure trove of fine-grained points of inter- and intralinguistic variation. The volume is divided into four parts. In the first, the authors examine the role that ellipsis plays and how it is analyzed in different theoretical frameworks and linguistic subdisciplines, such as HPSG, construction grammar, inquisitive semantics, and computational linguistics. Chapters in the second part highlight the usefulness of ellipsis as a diagnostic tool for other linguistic phenomena including movement and islands and codeswitching, while Part III focuses instead on the types of elliptical constructions found in natural language, such as sluicing, gapping, and null complement anaphora. Finally, the last part of the book contains case studies that investigate elliptical phenomena in a wide variety of languages, including Dutch, Japanese, Persian, and Finnish Sign Language.

The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages, in thirty-nine chapters, provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts that are being undertaken to deal with this crisis. Its purposes are (1) to provide a reasonably comprehensive reference volume, with the scope of the volume as a whole representing the breadth of the field; (2) to highlight both the range of thinking about language endangerment and the variety of responses to it; and (3) to broaden understanding of language endangerment, language documentation, and language revitalization, and, in so doing, to encourage and contribute to fresh thinking and new findings in support of endangered languages. The handbook is organized into five parts. Part I, Endangered Languages, addresses some of the fundamental issues that are essential to understanding the nature of the endangered languages crisis. Part II, Language Documentation provides an overview of the issues and activities of concern to linguists and others in their efforts to record and document endangered languages. Part III, Language Revitalization encompasses a diverse range of topics, including approaches, practices, and strategies for revitalizing endangered and sleeping (“dormant”) languages. Part IV, Endangered Languages and Biocultural Diversity, extends the discussion of language endangerment beyond its conventional boundaries to consider the interrelationship of language, culture, and environment. Part V, Looking to the Future, addresses a variety of topics that are certain to be of consequence in future efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages.

This handbook provides an authoritative, critical survey of current research and knowledge in the grammar of the English language. Following an introduction from the editors, the volume’s expert contributors explore a range of core topics in English grammar, beginning with issues in grammar writing and methodology. Chapters in part II then examine the various theoretical approaches to grammar, such as cognitive, constructional, and generative approaches, followed by the chapters in part III, which comprehensively cover the different subdomains of grammar, including compounds, phrase structure, clause types, tense and aspect, and information structure. Part IV offers coverage of the relationship between grammar and other fields – lexis, phonology, meaning, and discourse – while the concluding part of the book investigates grammatical change over time, regional variation, and genre and literary variation.

As any quick survey of the syntactic literature will show, there are almost as many different views of ergativity as there are so-called ergative languages (languages whose basic clause structure instantiates an ergative case-marking or agreement pattern). While ergativity is sometimes referred to as a typological characteristic of languages, research on the phenomenon has made it more and more clear that (a) languages do not fall clearly into one or the other of the ergative/absolutive vs. nominative/accusative categories and (b) ergative characteristics are not consistent from language to language. This volume contributes to both the theoretical and descriptive literature on ergativity and adds results from experimental investigations of ergativity. The chapters cover overview approaches within generative, typological, and functional paradigms, as well as approaches to the core morpho-syntactic building blocks of an ergative construction (absolutive case and licensing, and ergative case and licensing); common related constructions (anti-passive); common related properties (split-ergativity, syntactic vs. morphological ergativity, word order, the interaction of agreement patterns and ergativity); and extensions and permutations of ergativity (nominalizations, voice systems). While the editors all work within the generative framework and investigate the syntactic properties of ergativity through fieldwork, and many of the chapters represent similar research, there are also chapters representing different frameworks (functional, typological) and different approaches (experimental, diachronic). The theoretical chapters touch on many different languages representing a wide range of language families, and there are sixteen case studies that are more descriptive in nature, attesting to both the pervasiveness and diversity of ergative patterns.