The book represents the results of a synchronic and diachronic cross-African survey of quotative indexes. These are linguistic expressions that signal in the ongoing discourse the presence of a quote (often called "direct reported speech"). For this purpose, 39 African languages were selected to represent the genealogical and geographical diversity of the continent. The study is based primarily on this language sample, in particular on the analysis of quotative indexes and related expressions from a text corpus of each sample language, but also includes a wide range of data from the published literature on other African as well as non- African languages. It is the first typological investigation of direct reported discourse of this magnitude in a large group of languages. The book may thus serve as a starting point of similar studies in other geographical areas or even with a global scope, as well as stimulate more detailed investigations of particular languages. The results of the African survey challenge several prevailing cross-linguistic generalizations regarding quotative indexes and reported discourse constructions as a whole, of which two are of particular interest. In the syntactic domain, where reported discourse has mostly been dealt with under so- called sentential complementation, the study supports the minority view that direct reported discourse and also a large portion of indirect reported discourse show hardly any evidence for the claim that the reported clause is a syntactic object complement of some matrix verb. With respect to grammaticalization, the work concludes that speech verbs are, against common belief, not a frequent source of quotatives, complementizers, and other related markers. Far more frequent sources are markers of similarity and manner; generic verbs of equation, inchoativity, and action; and pronominals referring to the quote or the speaker. Another more general conclusion of the study is that especially direct reported discourse can be fruitfully analyzed as part of a larger linguistic domain called "mimesis". This comprises expressions which represent a state of affairs by means of enactment/ performance rather than with the help of "canonical" linguistic signs and includes, besides reported discourse, world-referring bodily gestures, ideophone-like signs, and non-linguistic sound.

The book provides insights into the systems and strategies of expressing the Phasal Polarity (PhP) concepts ALREADY, STILL, NOT YET and NO LONGER in African languages. Special emphasis is laid on careful examination of the functional spectrum and paradigmatic affiliation of PhP expressions. The book challenges hypotheses and established assumptions in the typological literature.

This volume presents the Egyptian-Coptic language in cross-linguistic (‘typological’) perspective. It is aimed at linguists of all stripes, especially typologists, historical linguists, and specialists in Egyptian-Coptic, Afroasiatic languages, or African languages. Uniquely, the contributions are written by both typologists and experts of Egyptian-Coptic and typologists. The former provide case studies dealing with particular aspects of the various phases of the Egyptian-Coptic language (e.g., COLLIER on conditional constructions), while the latter situate Egyptian-Coptic data in cross-linguistic perspective (e.g., those by GUELDEMANN and GENSLER). The volume also includes an introductory section that includes an overview of the Egyptian-Coptic language (HASPELMATH), a sketch of its sociohistorical setting (GROSSMAN & RICHTER), its relationship with language typology (RICHTER), and the way in which Egyptian-Coptic data should be presented to nonspecialists, focusing on transliteration and glossing (GROSSMAN & HASPELMATH). This is the first book to bring together language typology and the Egyptian-Coptic language in an explicit fashion.

Research on quotation has yielded a rich and diverse knowledge-base. Scientific interest has been sparked particularly by the recent emergence of new quotative forms in typologically related and unrelated languages (i.e. English be like, Hebrew kazé, Japanese mitai-na).The present collection gives a platform to research conducted within different linguistic sub-disciplines and on the basis of a variety of Western and non-Western languages. The introduction presents an overview of forms and functions of old and new quotative constructions. The nine chapters investigate quotation from different perspectives, from conversation analysis over grammaticalization and language variation and change to typological and formal approaches. The collection advocates a comprehensive approach to the phenomenon ‘quotation’, seeking a more nuanced knowledge-base as regards the linguistic properties, social uses and pragmatic functions than monolingual or single disciplinary approaches deliver. The cross-disciplinary nature and the wealth of data make the findings broadly available and relevant.

This innovative handbook takes a fresh look at the currently underestimated linguistic diversity of Africa, the continent with the largest number of languages in the world. It covers the major domains of linguistics, offering both a representative picture of Africa’s linguistic landscape as well as new and at times unconventional perspectives. The focus is not so much on exhaustiveness as on the fruitful relationship between African and general linguistics and the contributions the two domains can make to each other. This volume is thus intended for readers with a specific interest in African languages and also for students and scholars within the greater discipline of linguistics.

The chapters in this volume apply the methodology of relevance theory to develop accounts of various pragmatic phenomena which can be associated with the broadly conceived notion of style. Some of them are devoted to central cases of figurative language (metaphor, metonymy, puns, irony) while others deal with issues not readily associated with figurativeness (from multimodal communicative stimuli through strong and weak implicatures to discourse functions of connectives, particles and participles). Other chapters shed light on the use of specific communicative styles, ranging from hate speech to humour and humorous irony. Using the relevance-theoretic toolkit to analyse a spectrum of style-related issues, this volume makes a case for the model of pragmatics founded upon inference and continuity, understood as the non-existence of sharply delineated boundaries between classes of communicative phenomena.

Sentence (1) represents the phenomenon of reported thought, (2) that of reported speech: (1) Sasha thought: "This is fine" or Sasha thought that this would be fine (2) Sasha said: "This is fine" or Sasha said that this would be fine While sentences as in (1) have often been discussed in the context of those in (2) the former have rarely received specific attention. This has meant that much of the semantic and structural complexity, cross-linguistic variation, as well as the precise relation between (1) and (2) and related phenomena have remained unstudied. Addressing this gap, this volume represents the first collection of studies specifically dedicated to reported thought. It introduces a wide variety of cross-linguistic examples of the phenomenon and brings together authors from linguistic typology, corpus and interactional linguistics, and formal and functional theories of syntax to shed light on how talking about thoughts can become grammar in the languages of the world. The book should be of interest to linguists, philosophers of language, linguistic anthropologists and communication specialists seeking to understand topics at the boundary of stylistics and morphosyntax, as well as the grammar of epistemicity.