This is the first book to deal with the self-reflexive nature of narration of Beckett and Bernhard. Samuel Beckett's and Thomas Bernhard's works are representative of a persisting perplexity with regard to language. The texts of both authors are marked by their narrator's obsessive need to write, which is inextricably intertwined with their profound suspicion of language. The perpetuation of the narration is explained as an imperative, a simultaneously conscious and unconscious command which forces the artist to submit to the creative process. The author places this inexplicable force of the imperative within the context of Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory and Jacques Lacan's concept of desire. The attempt to define and interpret the two authors' prose and drama is displaced by this sense of the infinity of desire (Lacan) and by the eternal becoming of the will (Schopenhauer), which reveal themselves to lie at the heart of Beckett's and Bernhard's creativity.

A fascinating study of Beckett's legacy for contemporary writers, which is part of the growing interest in Beckett studies in the question of Beckett's reception and influence.

Tense and aspect are means by which language refers to time--how an event takes place in the past, present, or future. They play a key role in understanding the grammar and structure of all languages, and interest in them reaches across linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect is a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible guide to the topics and theories that currently form the front line of research into tense, aspect, and related areas. The volume contains 36 chapters, divided into 6 sections, written by internationally known experts in theoretical linguistics.

Imperative sentences usually occur in speech acts such as orders, requests, and pleas. However, they are also used to give advice, and to grant permission, and are sometimes found in advertisements, good wishes and conditional constructions. Yet, the relationship between the form of imperatives, and the wide range of speech acts in which they occur, remains unclear, as do the ways in which semantic theory should handle imperatives. This book is the first to look systematically at both the data and the theory. The first part discusses data from a large set of languages, including many outside the Indo-European family, and analyses in detail the range of uses to which imperatives are put, paying particular attention to controversial cases. This provides the empirical background for the second part, where the authors offer an accessible, comprehensive and in-depth discussion of the major theoretical accounts of imperative semantics and pragmatics.

This is the first book to deal with the self-reflexive nature of narration of Beckett and Bernhard. Samuel Beckett's and Thomas Bernhard's works are representative of a persisting perplexity with regard to language. The texts of both authors are marked by their narrator's obsessive need to write, which is inextricably intertwined with their profound suspicion of language. The perpetuation of the narration is explained as an imperative, a simultaneously conscious and unconscious command which forces the artist to submit to the creative process. The author places this inexplicable force of the imperative within the context of Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory and Jacques Lacan's concept of desire. The attempt to define and interpret the two authors' prose and drama is displaced by this sense of the infinity of desire (Lacan) and by the eternal becoming of the will (Schopenhauer), which reveal themselves to lie at the heart of Beckett's and Bernhard's creativity.

The imperative mood as a whole has generally been neglected by Greek grammarians. The Greek Imperative Mood in the New Testament: A Cognitive and Communicative Approach utilizes insights from modern linguistics and communication theory in order to propose an inherent (semantic) meaning for the mood and describe the way in which it is used in the New Testament (pragmatics). A linguistic theory called neuro-cognitive stratificational linguistics is used to help isolate the morphological imperative mood and focus on addressing issues directly related to this area, while principles from a communication theory called relevance theory provide a theoretical basis for describing the usages of the mood. This book also includes a survey of New Testament and select linguistic approaches to the imperative mood and proposes that the imperative mood is volitional-directive and should be classified in a multidimensional manner. Each imperative should be classified according to force, which participant (speaker or hearer) benefits from the fulfillment of the imperative, and where the imperative falls within the event sequence of the action described in the utterance. In this context, sociological factors such as the rank of participants and level of politeness are discussed together with other pragmatic-related information. The Greek Imperative Mood in the New Testament is a valuable teaching tool for intermediate and advanced Greek classes.

This is the first book to deal with the self-reflexive nature of narration of Beckett and Bernhard. Samuel Beckett's and Thomas Bernbard's works are representative of a persisting perplexity with regard to language. The texts of both authors are marked by their narrator's obsessive need to write, which is inextricably intertwined with their profound suspicion of language. The perpetuation of the narration is explained as an imperative, a simultaneously conscious and unconscious command which forces the artist to submit to the creative process. The author places this inexplicable force of the imperative within the context of Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory and Jacques Lacan's concept of desire. The attempt to define and interpret the two authors' prose and drama is displaced by this sense of the infinity of desire (Lacan) and by the eternal becoming of the will (Schopenhauer), which reveal themselves to lie at the heart of Beckett's and Bernhard's creativity.