Signed languages are the naturally-evolved visual-gestural languages of deaf communities. The realization that they are true languages is one of the great discoveries of the last thirty years of linguistic research. This book examines the linguistic properties of many, including detailed case studies of Hong Kong, British, Mexican and German signed languages. The contributors focus…
Preposition placement, the competition between preposition stranding (What is he talking about?) and pied-piping (About what is he talking?), is one of the most interesting areas of syntactic variation in English. This is the first book to investigate preposition placement across all types of clauses that license it, such as questions, exclamations and wh-clauses, and…
Word grammar is a theory of language structure and is based on the assumption that language, and indeed the whole of knowledge, is a network, and that virtually all of knowledge is learned. It combines the psychological insights of cognitive linguistics with the rigour of more formal theories. This textbook spans a broad range of…
This invaluable little book highlights the real mistakes that students make in the exam – and shows how to avoid them. Based on analysis of thousands of exam scripts, each unit targets a key problem area. Clear explanations and exercises help students to use the language accurately. Regular tests offer students a further opportunity to…
Most of the time we communicate using language without considering the complex activity we are undertaking, forming words and sentences in a split second. This book introduces the analysis of language structure, combining both description and theory within a single, practical text. It begins by examining words and parts of words, and then looks at…