In Old Testament exegesis a gap is widening between the adherents of the "diachronic", historical-critical approach and those who out of dissatisfaction with both the results and the methods of this "classical" approach opt for a wide variety of "synchronic" approaches. The Ninth Joint Meeting of the Dutch "Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap" and the British "Society for Old Testament Study", held at Kampen 28-31 August 1994, brought together partisans from both camps who engaged in a most interesting and fruitful debate on one of the major methodological issues confronting modern O.T. scholarship. This volume contains the papers read as well as some reports from the workshops. With indices of texts and subjects.

The synchronic Lines are the roads of Life, a network of streaming energy that spills out over planet Earth and links up all worlds where life exists. Energy streams that catalyze the great forces of the cosmos. They are special lines of communication that become amplifiers of emotions, carrying information which reaches out to all living beings, irrespective of language differences, since they act on the principle that like attracts like The Synchronic Lines cross our Earth like vibrant highways of energy uniting far distant points. This book describes how and why this works, illustrating the functions of the Synchronic Lines and the paths they take, with the help of maps and illustrations. From careful study of the Lines it is possible to derive a very great deal of information that will lead us to interpret historical events in a new way.

This volume emphasizes a new line of thinking in generative grammar which acknowledges that certain synchronic properties of languages can only be fully understood if diachronic data is taken into consideration. The central topics addressed in this collection of papers are (1) a critical assessment of the hypothesis that certain apparently synchronic generalizations are actually the result of the mechanisms of language change, (2) an inquiry into how diachronic data can be used to evaluate and shape formal analyses of particular synchronic phenomena. Reviving the interest in diachronic explanations for synchronic data, the contributions provide novel and original diachronic accounts of phenomena that up to now have escaped a deeper synchronic explanation, including the nature of EPP features, gaps in the distribution of complementizer agreement, and counterexamples to the generalization that rich verbal inflection correlates with verb movement.

This book deals with synchronic variation in Chinese through a diachronic lens, based on the evidence from a quantitative, longitudinal corpus study. Departing from the traditional analysis in diachronic changes in Chinese linguistics, the cognitive constructionist approach employed in this book is able to capture incremental changes by combining syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Topics such as word order, focus, scopes of quantifiers, information structure, and negation have been important issues in linguistics, but they are rarely integrated as a whole. The book makes their diachronic interactions available to the students and researchers in the fields of general and Chinese linguistics.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

Synchronic corpus linguistics contains select papers from the sixteenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 16). The papers reflect the state of the art in the design, analysis, and annotation of corpora. Corpora new and old facilitate the description of single registers of English (e.g., London teenage English, business English) and of specific grammatical topics across registers (e.g., the grammatical flexibility of idioms), including variation studies (e.g., popular vs. technical registers of English). Other corpora permit the comparison of English to other languages (Norwegian, German, Swedish); of L1 English to L2 English; and of English as an original language to English in translation. A number of these papers emphasize pragmatics: indeed, among the papers on spoken English is an assessment of corpora annotated for discourse analysis. Other papers describe different aspects of the automatic analysis of text. Two papers describe semantic analysis of large text corpora composed of news/business text. Automatic grammatical analysis is the subject of other papers: two evaluate existing automatic parsers and wordclass taggers, while two describe how annotated corpora are being used to develop two new and innovative automatic parsers.