Bøger i SpringerBriefs in Linguistics serien

This volume offers an introduction to cognitive linguistics, written by authors who were engaged in the field from its beginnings. From the point of view of the history of Linguistics, it presents the evolution of the theory over time in a range of directions, including its view of the nature of Language itself, as well as how it is acquired.

This book examines the language abilities of persons with Down Syndrome who are able to read. The text defends the 'delayed but not deviant view' of linguistic abilities by examining a range of syntactic phenomena that develop at different points for typically developing children, and for which a similar overall pattern is found for persons with Down Syndrome. The volume also defends the 'delayed but not deviant view' against challenges arising from studies of the comprehension of definite pronouns. The study fits within a picture of linguistic abilities that is modular:  skills with language do not emerge from other cognitive functions.  It is an important source of information for readers in the departments of linguistics, speech and language therapy, and cognitive science.

This book, one of the few English language publications on indigenous languages spoken in East Africa, highlights theoretical contributions on understudied East Cushitic languages, based on extensive data.

This book offers the latest insights on language documentation, a reborn, refashioned, and reenergized subfield of linguistics motivated by the urgent task of creating a record of the world's fast disappearing languages.

This book presents the effects of perceptual training on the perception of English lexical stress in rising intonation by Mandarin-speaking EFL learners in Taiwan, and shows that these effects can be positive as well as negative.

This book addresses one of the most crucial and common questions confronting planners of languages other than English, that is, how the impacts of global languages on local languages should be dealt with: internationalization or local language promotion?

This book focuses on Portuguese as an additional language and its young learners in threecase studies within the Portuguese-speaking world: Portuguese as a second language inCape Verde, Portuguese as a heritage language in Switzerland and Portuguese as a foreignlanguage in Macao SAR.

Secondly, EFL university students metalinguistically claim multiple ideologies of linguistic authenticities in terms of their usage of 'translingual Englishes' on social media as opposed to other colliding language ideologies such as linguistic purity and linguistic dystopia.

This book provides a critical introduction to the current views and controversies regarding language evolution. This book is essential reading for scholars and students interested in language evolution, especially those in the fields of linguistics, psychology, biology, anthropology, and neuroscience.

It demonstrates that it is a drawback not to distinguish word formation, and explains that the function of word formation rules is different from the function of the lexicon and rules of grammar. After making the argument for a separate word formation component, the book sets out to determine which types of rule qualify as part of this component.

This book makes an original contribution to the fields of sociolinguistics, language planning policy and Chinese language studies. It examines the effectiveness of the Singapore¿s Speak Mandarin Campaign in changing the language use of dialect speakers towards Mandarin.Singapore may be only ¿a small red dot¿ and barely visible on the world¿s map. However, its complex and dynamic linguistic diversity and its quadrilingual educational system make it a unique and fascinating research site for examining deliberate language planning on the part of governmental authorities. 2016 marks the 37th anniversary of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, a focused language-planning policy aimed at changing the deeply entrenched sociolinguistic habits of Chinese Singaporeans who are used to speaking Chinese dialects.  This book provides a revealing update on dialect speakers¿ attitudes towards the campaign by including discussions and other related issues such as the recent call for the revitalisation of Chinese dialects by younger dialect speakers, Chinese students¿ attitude towards learning Mandarin in schools, the encroachment of English in the home environment, the spread and dominance of English in the local linguistic landscape, and the challenges of maintaining Mandarin as a language of use and preference.

While acknowledging that neoliberal agencies can appropriate diverse languages and language practices, including resources and dispositions theorized by scholars of multilingualism, it argues that a distinction must be made between the different language ideologies informing communicative practices.

This book presents multilingualism as a social phenomenon, which arises when speakers of a different language move to a new society and learn to speak the dominant language of the society.

The present volume introduces a research design intended to capture a wide range of linguistic data, elicited by means of behavioral tasks, neuroimageing data and free speech from both second language learners and first language attriters of two languages (Dutch and German) representing a wide range of language combinations and ages of onset.