In Basic Linguistic Theory R. M. W. Dixon provides a new and fundamental characterization of the nature of human languages and a comprehensive guide to their description and analysis. In three clearly written and accessible volumes, he describes how best to go about doing linguistics, the most satisfactory and profitable ways to work, and the pitfalls to avoid. Volume 2 offer in-depth tours of underlying principles of grammatical organization, as well as many of the facts of grammatical variation.
This is the first volume of a work envisioned to consist of six volumes, providing a complete overview of the unified approach to basic problems of linguistics, as developed by Hans-Heinrich Lieb. This first volume contains a detailed overview of Integrational Linguistics, and outlines a major fragment of a theory of language systems. The further volumes will discuss: II. A theory of grammars; III. Language universals and language contrast; IV. Syntax and semantics; V. Morphology and morphosemantics; VI. Lexical semantics.
In this provocative national bestseller, first-time novelist Lightman takes us back to 1905 and into the dreams of a young patent clerk named Albert Einstein, just as he was completing his theory of relativity. "Lightman lets the reader in on the workings of a creative scientific mind". Kirkus Reviews.
This book brings together a collection of current research on the assessment of oral proficiency in a second language. Fourteen chapters focus on the use of the language proficiency interview or LPI to assess oral proficiency. The volume addresses the central issue of validity in proficiency assessment: the ways in which the language proficiency interview is accomplished through discourse.Contributors draw on a variety of discourse perspectives, including the ethnography of speaking, conversation analysis, language socialization theory, sociolinguistic variation theory, human interaction research, and systemic functional linguistics.
There is a growing awareness that a fruitful cooperation between the (diachronic and synchronic) study of language variation and change and work in phonological theory is both possible and desirable. The study of language variation and change would benefit from this kind of cooperation on the conceptual and theoretical levels. Phonological theory may well profit from a greater use of what is commonly called ‘external evidence’. This volume contains contributions by outstanding representatives from the more data-oriented fields and phonological theory.
