Demonstrates the importance of corpus research to applied linguistics, covering a range of areas.

Language in the Real World challenges traditional approaches to linguistics to provide an innovative introduction to the subject. By first examining the real world applications of core areas of linguistics and then addressing the theory behind these applications, this text offers an inductive, illustrative, and interactive overview for students. Key areas covered include animal communication, phonology, language variation, gender and power, lexicography, translation, forensic linguistics, language acquisition, ASL, and language disorders. Each chapter, written by an expert in the field, is introduced by boxed notes listing the key points covered and features an author’s note to readers that situates the chapter in its real world context. Activities and pointers for further study and reading are also integrated into the chapters and an end of text glossary is provided to aid study. Professors and students will benefit from the interactive Companion Website that includes a student section featuring comments and hints on the chapter exercises within the book, a series of flash cards to test knowledge and further reading and links to key resources. Material for professors includes essay and multiple choice questions based on each chapter and additional general discussion topics. Language in the Real World shows that linguistics can be appreciated, studied, and enjoyed by actively engaging real world applications of linguistic knowledge and principles and will be essential reading for students with an interest in language. Visit the Companion Website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/languagerealworld

This book explores the importance of Cognitive Linguistics for specialized language within the context of Frame-based Terminology (FBT). FBT uses aspects of Frame Semantics, coupled with premises from Cognitive Linguistics to structure specialized domains and create non-language-specific knowledge representations. Corpus analysis provides information regarding the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of specialized knowledge units. Also studied is the role of metaphor and metonymy in specialized texts. The first section explains the purpose and structure of the book. The second section gives an overview of basic concepts, theories, and applications in Terminology and Cognitive Linguistics. The third section explains the Frame-based Terminology approach. The fourth section explores the role of contextual information in specialized knowledge representation as reflected in linguistic contexts and graphical information. The final section highlights the conclusions that can be derived from this study.

This volume provides an overview of four currently booming areas in the discipline of corpus linguistics. The first section is concerned with studies of the history and development of morphological and syntactic phenomena in English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. The second section contains case studies investigating the functions and contexts of use of different morphological and syntactic forms in English, Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. The third section contains studies in the field of genre and register from settings as diverse as health, call center, academic, and legal discourse. The final section features papers refining existing, and exploring new, corpus-linguistic methods: dispersions, text mining, corpus similarity, as well as the development of extraction patterns and the evaluation of tagging methods.

This textbook, designed for courses in first-and-second language education, provides a "big picture" view of basic linguistics through readings organized in 3 thematic units-"What is Language and How is it Acquired?"; "How Does Language Change?"; and "Wh

The ever-growing popularity of Google over the recent decade has required a specific method of man-machine communication: human query should be short, whereas the machine answer may take a form of a wide range of documents. This type of communication has triggered a rapid development in the domain of Information Extraction, aimed at providing the asker with a more precise information. The recent success of intelligent personal assistants supporting users in searching or even extracting information and answers from large collections of electronic documents signals the onset of a new era in man-machine communication – we shall soon explain to our small devices what we need to know and expect valuable answers quickly and automatically delivered. The progress of man-machine communication is accompanied by growth in the significance of applied Computational Linguistics – we need machines to understand much more from the language we speak naturally than it is the case of up-to-date search systems. Moreover, we need machine support in crossing language barriers that is necessary more and more often when facing the global character of the Web. This books reports on the latest developments in the field. It contains 15 chapters written by researchers who aim at making linguistic theories work – for the better understanding between the man and the machine.