This study sheds new light on the complex relationship between cognitive and linguistic categories. Challenging the view of cases as categories in cognitive space, Schlesinger proposes a new understanding of the concept of case. Drawing on evidence from psycholinguistic research and English language data, he argues that case categories are in fact composed of more primitive cognitive notions: features and dimensions. These are registered in the lexical entries of individual verbs, thereby allowing certain metaphorical extensions. This new approach to case permits better descriptions of...

This book traces the development of Standard English, revealing a complex and intriguing history that challenges the usual textbook accounts. Leading scholars offer a wide-ranging analysis, from theoretical discussions of the origin of dialects, to detailed descriptions of the history of individual Standard English features. Ranging from Middle English to the Modern English period, the volume concludes that Standard English had no one single ancestor dialect, but is the cumulative result of generations of authoritative writing from many text types.

Kingsley Bolton uses early word lists, satirical cartoons and data from journals and memoirs to uncover the forgotten history of English in China, from the arrival of the first English-speaking traders in the early seventeenth century to the present. Demonstrating how contemporary Hong Kong English has its historical roots in Chinese pidgin English, the book considers the changing status of English in mainland China over time, particularly recent developments since 1997.

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. The language of press reportage, fiction, learned writing and spontaneous...

The Prague School theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP) is concerned with the distribution of information as determined by all meaningful elements in a written or spoken sentence, such as intonation, word order and context. Jan Firbas discusses the key phenomenon of communicative dynamism, which the sentence elements carry in different degrees, and the distribution of which determines the orientation or perspective of the sentence.

This book traces the development of Standard English, revealing a complex and intriguing history that challenges the usual textbook accounts. Leading scholars offer a wide-ranging analysis, from theoretical discussions of the origin of dialects, to detailed descriptions of the history of individual Standard English features. Ranging from Middle English to the Modern English period, the volume concludes that Standard English had no one single ancestor dialect, but is the cumulative result of generations of authoritative writing from many text types.

The English of the Southern United States is possibly the most studied of any regional variety of any language. However, most, if not all, books about Southern American English have been directed almost exclusively toward scholars already working in the field. Written by a team of experts, many of them internationally known, this volume provides a broad overview of the foundations of, and current research on, language variation in the Southern United States.

The late Middle Ages in England saw a flowering of scientific writing in the vernacular that moved English discourse in new directions and established new textual genres. This book examines the sociolinguistic causes and effects of that process, based on the empirical evidence from manuscripts and computerized files. Topics covered include scriptorial "house-styles," code-switching, translation strategies, and transmission processes. The book offers important new insights into vernacularization phenomena, and will be welcomed by historical linguists and medievalists alike.

Speakers of British and American English display some striking differences in their use of grammar. In this detailed survey, John Algeo considers questions such as: Who lives on a street, and who lives in a street? Who takes a bath, and who has a bath? Who says Neither do I, and who says Nor do I? After 'thank you', who says Not at all and who says You're welcome? Whose team are on the ball, and whose team isn't? Containing extensive quotations from real-life English on both sides of the Atlantic, collected over the past twenty years, this is a clear and highly organized guide to the...