In this rich reference work, Beth Levin classifies over 3,000 English verbs according to shared meaning and behavior Levin starts with the hypothesis that a verb's meaning influences its syntactic behavior and develops it into a powerful tool for studying the English verb lexicon She shows how identifying verbs with similar syntactic behavior provides an effective means of distinguishing semantically coherent verb classes, and isolates these classes by examining verb behavior with respect to a wide range of syntactic alternations that reflect verb meaning The first part of the book sets out alternate ways in which verbs can express their arguments The second presents classes of verbs that share a kernel of meaning and explores in detail the behavior of each class, drawing on the alternations in the first part Levin's discussion of each class and alternation includes lists of relevant verbs, illustrative examples, comments on noteworthy properties, and bibliographic references The result is an original, systematic picture of the organization of the verb inventory Easy to use, "English Verb Classes and Alternations" sets the stage for further explorations of the interface between lexical semantics and syntax It will prove indispensable for theoretical and computational linguists, psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, lexicographers, and teachers of English as a second language Beth Levin is associate professor of linguistics at Northwestern University

English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation

Action and embodiment within situated human interaction

Extensively revised and updated, this second edition provides, in an A-Z format, an analysis of the most important generalizations that have been made on the unidirectional change of grammatical forms and constructions. Based on the analysis of more than 1,000 languages, it reconstructs over 500 processes of grammatical change in the languages of the world, including East Asian languages such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Readers are provided with the tools to discover how lexical and grammatical meanings can be related to one another in a principled way, how such issues as polysemy, heterosemy, and transcategoriality are dealt with, and why certain linguistic forms have simultaneous lexical and grammatical functions. Definitions of lexical concepts are provided with examples from a broad variety of languages, and references to key relevant research literature. Linguists and other scholars will gain a better understanding of languages on a worldwide scale.

/pdf/world-lexicon-of-grammaticalization-20jp10wyuv.pdf

World Lexicon of grammaticalization

Informal verbal interaction is the core matrix for human social life. A mechanism for coordinating this basic mode of interaction is a system of turn-taking that regulates who is to speak and when. Yet relatively little is known about how this system varies across cultures. The anthropological literature reports significant cultural differences in the timing of turn-taking in ordinary conversation. We test these claims and show that in fact there are striking universals in the underlying pattern of response latency in conversation. Using a worldwide sample of 10 languages drawn from traditional indigenous communities to major world languages, we show that all of the languages tested provide clear evidence for a general avoidance of overlapping talk and a minimization of silence between conversational turns. In addition, all of the languages show the same factors explaining within-language variation in speed of response. We do, however, find differences across the languages in the average gap between turns, within a range of 250 ms from the cross-language mean. We believe that a natural sensitivity to these tempo differences leads to a subjective perception of dramatic or even fundamental differences as offered in ethnographic reports of conversational style. Our empirical evidence suggests robust human universals in this domain, where local variations are quantitative only, pointing to a single shared infrastructure for language use with likely ethological foundations.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/106/26/10587.full.pdf

Universals and cultural variation in turn taking in conversation

Discourse Analysis for Language Teaching gives a practical introduction to the field of discourse analysis and its relevance for language teaching. It begins by answering the question 'What is discourse analysis?' and examines how discourse analysts approach spoken and written language. Different models of analysis are outlined and evaluated in terms of their usefulness to language teachers. This is followed by chapters on discourse-oriented approaches to grammar, vocabulary and phonology. The final section looks at spoken and written language in the light of native-speaker and learner data and considers examples of teaching approaches. Discourse Analysis for Language Teaching has a very practical orientation, and the text is interspersed with reader activities with guidance on appropriate responses at the end.

Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers

This article presents a revised version of GAT, a transcription system first developed
by a group of German conversation analysts and interactional linguists in
1998. GAT tries to follow as many principles and conventions of CA's Jeffersonstyle
transcription as possible, yet proposes some conventions which are more
compatible with linguistic and phonetic analyses of spoken language, especially
for the representation of prosody in talk-in-interaction. After ten years of use by
many reseachers in conversation and discourse analysis, it was time to revise the
first version, against the background of past experience and in light of new necessities
for the transcription of corpora arising from technological advances and
methodological developments over recent years. This text presents the new GAT
2 transcription system with all its conventions. It gives detailed instructions on
how to transcribe spoken talk on three levels of delicacy: minimal, basic and refined
transcript versions. In addition, it briefly introduces a few tools that may be
helpful for the user: the online tutorial GAT-TO and the transcription editing
software FOLKER.

http://www.gespraechsforschung-online.de/fileadmin/dateien/heft2009/px-gat2.pdf

Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2 (GAT 2)

An introduction to English prosody

List of contributors Foreword by John J. Cumperz Introduction 1. Towards an interactional perspective on prosody and a prosodic perspective on interaction Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Margret Selting 2. On the prosody and syntax of turn-continuations Peter Auer 3. Ending up in Ulster: prosody and turn-taking in English dialects Bill Wells and Sue Peppe 4. Affiliating and disaffiliating with continuers: prosodic aspects of recipiency Frank Ernst Muller 5. Conversational phonetics: some aspects of news receipts in everyday talk John Local 6. Prosody as an activity-type distinctive cue in conversation: the case of so-called 'astonished' questions in repair initiation Margret Selting 7. The prosodic contextualization of moral work: an analysis of reproaches in 'why'-formats Susanne Gunther 8. On rhythm in everyday German conversation: beat clashes in assessment utterances Susanne Uhmann 9. The prosody of repetition: on quoting and mimicry Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen 10. Working on young children's utterances: prosodic aspects of repetition during picture labelling Clare Tarplee 11. Informings and announcements in their environment: prosody within a multi-activity work setting Marjorie Harness Goodwin Indexes.

Prosody in conversation : interactional studies

1. Foreword (by Thompson, Sandra A.) 2. Introducing Interactional Linguistics (by Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth) 3. Part I. Language structure in interaction 4. Emerging syntax for interaction: Noun phrases and clauses as a syntactic resource for interaction (by Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa) 5. At the intersection of turn and sequence: Negation and what comes next (by Ford, Cecilia E.) 6. The implementation of possible cognitive shifts in Japanese conversation: Complementizers as pivotal devices (by Tanaka, Hiroko) 7. On causal clause combining: The case of 'weil' in spoken German (by Scheutz, Hannes) 8. Dutch 'but' as a sequential conjunction: Its use as a resumption marker (by Mazeland, Harrie) 9. On some uses of the discourse particle 'kyl(la)' in Finnish conversation (by Hakulinen, Auli) 10. Interactional Linguistics and language development: A conversation analytic perspective on emergent syntax (by Corrin, Juliette) 11. Part II. Interactional order and linguistic practice 12. Fragments of units as deviant cases of unit production in conversational talk (by Selting, Margret) 13. Notes on turn-construction methods in Danish and Turkish conversation (by Steensig, Jakob) 14. An exploration of prosody and turn projection in English conversation (by Fox, Barbara A.) 15. Postposition-initiated utterances in Japanese conversation: An interactional account of a grammatical practice (by Hayashi, Makoto) 16. Confirming intersubjectivity through retroactive elaboration: Organization of phrasal units in other-initiated repair sequences in Korean conversation (by Kim, Kyu-hyun) 17. Some arguments for the relevance of syntax to same-sentence self-repair in everyday German conversation (by Uhmann, Susanne) 18. Simple answers to polar questions: The case of Finnish (by Sorjonen, Marja-Leena) 19. List of contributors 20. Index

Studies in Interactional Linguistics

Using cases of misalignment and realignment in the unfolding of interactional sequences in which future actions and events are being negotiated in everyday English conversation, this paper demonstrates that participants distinguish between the initiating actions of Proposal*, Offer*, Request*, and Suggestion*, if these labels are understood as technical terms for distinct constellations of answers to the questions (i) who will carry out the future action? and (ii) who will benefit from it?. The argument made is that these different action types are routinely associated with different sets of recurrent linguistic forms, or social action formats, and that it is through these that speakers can frame their turns as implementing one action type as opposed to another and that recipients can recognize these actions as such and respond to them accordingly. The fact that there is only a limited amount of ‘polysemy’, or overlap in the formats commonly used for Proposals*, Requests*, Offers*, and Suggestions* in English conversation, means that these formats deliver often distinctive cues to the type of action being implemented. When misalignments and realignments occur, they can often be traced to the fact that ‘polysemous’ linguistic formats have been used to implement the initiating action.

Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen

Papers

Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2 (GAT 2)

An introduction to English prosody

Prosody in conversation : interactional studies

Studies in Interactional Linguistics

What does grammar tell us about action