Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: In the light of de Saussure’s definition of the linguistic sign and Chomskyan generative grammar, a great number of Linguists1 of the second half of the 20th century used to define language primarily in terms of an artificially constructed autonomous sign system. From this traditional point of view, the field of linguistics did not see beyond the construct it had created resulting in the deformation of the object of study, language-in-use. The pragmatic turn of the 1960s brought along what one might call the ‘Copernican revolution’ in linguistics. In this connection, Martinet pointed at one of the most fundamental prerequisites of well-conducted scientific research, in that he rejected firmly any scientific proceeding that sacrifices the integrity of the object of study to methodological exigencies. On the contrary, the object itself, language in use, dictates to a great extent the methodology of the researcher. In the course of this treatise, I discuss, in the context of the above-mentioned assumptions, the issue of the lexical unit. Thereby, I will concentrate on the two conflicting definitions given, on the one hand, in the form of the one-word lexical unit and, on the other, in the form the multi-word unit. During my argumentation, I attempt to provide sufficient evidence in favour of the multi-word lexical unit showing that the equation of the single word with a unit of meaning needs to be overcome ultimately. This treatise comprises both a theoretical and an empirical part. The former lays the theoretical foundation for the empirical investigation put forward in the course of the methodological section. After the obligatory sketch of the research background, I introduce the reader to the basic assumptions of Weigand’s pragmatic model. Looking at lexical semantics, the universal level of contrastive studies is kept in the foreground. In this context, I primarily concentrate on the definition of predicating fields and meaning positions as well as the principle of meaning equivalence. In addition, the theoretical introduction will offer some preliminary remarks on the expression side.

Particle verbs (combinations of two words but lexical units) are a notorious problem in linguistics. Is a particle verb like look up one word or two? It has its own entry in dictionaries, as if it is one word, but look and up can be split up in a sentence: we can say He looked the information up and He looked up the information. But why can't we say He looked up it? In English look and up can only be separated by a direct object, but in Dutch the two parts can be separated over a much longer distance. How did such hybrid verbs arise and how do they function? How can we make sense of them in modern theories of language structure? This book sets out to answer these and other questions, explaining how these verbs fit into the grammatical systems of English and Dutch.

The Meaning Text Theory (MTT) is a lexicon-centred and dependency-based theory for the description of language using a holistic model that incorporates semantics, syntax, morphology and lexis. This volume, prepared on the occasion of Igor Mel'cuk's 70th birthday, offers a cross-section of the current advances in MTT and its applications. The first part of the book focuses on lexical phenomena that are still largely neglected in mainstream linguistics: sound symbolism as manifested by ideophones, and idiosyncratic lexical relations as manifested by lexical functions (LFs). In particular, LFs are addressed from different angles (including the introduction of new “standard” LFs, the argument structure and semantic decomposition of lexical relations captured by LFs, automatic recognition of LF-instances in corpora, and the use of LFs in terminology and natural language processing). The second part of the book deals with such prominent model-oriented issues as semantic paraphrasing in MTT, the role of phrase structure in MTT and syntactic analysis within MTT.

While verb classes are a mainstay of linguistic research, the field lacks consensus on precisely what constitutes a verb class. This book presents a novel approach to verb classes, employing a bottom-up, corpus-based methodology and combining key insights from Frame Semantics, Construction Grammar, and Valency Grammar. On this approach, verb classes are formulated at varying granularity levels to adequately capture both the shared semantic and syntactic properties unifying verbs of a class and the idiosyncratic properties unique to individual verbs. In-depth analyses based on this approach shed light on the interrelations between verbs, frame-semantics, and constructions, and on the semantic richness and network organization of grammatical constructions. This approach is extended to a comparison of Change and Theft verbs, revealing unexpected lexical and syntactic differences across semantically distinct classes. Finally, a range of contrastive (German–English) analyses demonstrate how verb classes can inform the cross-linguistic comparison of verbs and constructions.

This volume explores linguistic metaphor identification in a wide variety of languages and language families. The book is an essential read for anyone interested in researching language and metaphor, from students to experienced scholars. Its primary goals are to discuss the challenges involved in applying the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU) to a range of languages across the globe, and to offer theoretically grounded advice and guidelines enabling researchers to identify metaphors in multiple languages in a valid and replicable way. The volume is intended as a practical guidebook that identifies and discusses procedural challenges of metaphor identification across languages, thus better enabling researchers to reliably identify metaphor in a multitude of languages. Although able to be read independently, this volume – written by metaphor researchers from around the world – is the ideal companion volume for the 2010 Benjamins book A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification: From MIP to MIPVU.

Since Gérard Genette first coined the term in 1972, focalization has been recognized as one ofthe key concepts in contemporary understandings of narrative. However, in the field of biblical studies, the concept has been largely overlooked. Dr. Konstantin Nazarov seeks to rectify this oversight, exploring the implications of focalization on Old Testament narratology. Utilizing the work of Wolf Schmid and Valeri Tjupa to develop his methodology – and examining the book of Ruth as a case study – Nazarov demonstrates the value of focalization in furthering the appreciation and understanding of biblical texts. This is an excellent resource for students of narratology, biblical studies scholars, or anyone seeking to better understand the narratives of Scripture.

This book demonstrates how the underlying principles of the English-based FrameNet project are successfully applied to the description and analysis of typologically diverse languages. The stimulating collection of articles brings together insights from lexical semantics, corpus linguistics, computational lexicography, machine learning, and psychology to address three main questions: To what degree is it possible to apply semantic frames derived from the English lexicon to the description and analysis of other languages? What types of resources are necessary for the creation of FrameNets for French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, and Spanish? How can the creation of multi-lingual FrameNets be automated? The contents exemplifies the liveliness of current research on cross-lingual applications of Frame Semantics to natural language processing.