Bøger i Europaische Hochschulschriften/European University Studies/Publications Universitaires Europeennes Reihe 21: Linguistik/Series 21: Linguistics/Serie 21: Linguistique serien

The book adopts a crosslinguistic and crosscultural approach to narrative analysis. Concepts of narrative are explored through a contrastive study of its expressions in English and Chinese and through a comparison of the contexts of production. Narratives written by Grade 5/6 students were collected from primary schools in Sydney and in Hong Kong. Their structural, ideational and stylistic characteristics were contrasted within a synthesized framework of Western and Chinese narrative traditions, the Labovian model, Halliday¿s systemic functional grammar, critical discourse analysis and genre theory. The socio-cultural context was analyzed by examining curriculum documents and by investigating teachers¿ beliefs and teaching practices through surveys, interviews and observations. The book shows that the meaning of narrative has to be interpreted within a suprastructure which embodies the expectations, norms, and values of a specific culture. It is a powerful statement of how schools as social and cultural institutions mediate the production of narrative texts and transmit larger cultural values through specific practices. The study makes a substantial contribution to the field for its combination of empirical detail and theoretical breadth, and for its demonstration of how textual and linguistic structures arise from, and make sense within, divergent social and institutional contexts.

The Missing Link identified by Michèle Kaiser-Cooke explains the fundamental translatability of the world. Based on Darwin¿s theory of evolution, a link is established between various human interpretations of reality, as manifested in cultures, languages and disciplines. These different constructions of reality are essentially commensurable and therefore also translatable because of the common experience of the conditio humana. The only limits to translatability, whether between cultures, languages or disciplines, are set by the limits of human communication. By clearly defining the translation paradigm, the author makes it possible to explain the commensurability of all languages within the concept of the indissoluble unity of theory and practice.

This book explores the semantic properties of verbs expressing human locomotion and investigates their sense relations in German and English diachronically. For this purpose a model was developed which is related to revised versions of Lutzeier (1981) by linking it with a context-dependent analysis, hence combining a paradigmatic with a syntagmatic approach. Within this approach the influence of contexts on verbs is investigated, and it is illustrated to what extent syntagmatic constraints play a part in establishing features in verbs. Semantic changes holding between members of this lexical field are shown in tables and diagrams. A comparison of morphologically related verbs is conducted, and qualitative and quantitative differences in the lexical representation of meaning concepts are analysed. In addition, it is demonstrated what notions are lexicalised in each linguistic period.

The aim of this study is to establish the co-operative communication strategies that are used in air traffic control (ATC) conversations. The research deals with the question: what kind of co-operative communication strategies do pilots and controllers employ in a speech situation with a restricted use of vocabulary, which generally does not permit any deviations from standard phraseology? The strategies in ATC speech are then compared to those used by second language learners. Faerch and Kasper¿s (1983) taxonomy of communication strategies will serve as a basis for this comparison. The author analyses authentic speech samples from various ATC workstations at Zurich Airport and evaluates various aspects of phraseology training of air traffic controllers.

This book explores the gap that has developed between two sides in linguistics: the formal tradition and the functional tradition. It discusses fundamental issues such as tense, aspect and action by examining and comparing insights from the two traditions with a view to determining whether there are any possibilities of future bridge-building between the two approaches. This study focuses on comparing the actual output of different linguistic approaches and examines their ¿usefulness¿. A major aim is, therefore, to evaluate and identify the most useful approach.

This book argues for the inclusion of a cognitive psychological component in the analysis of theme and rheme, the basic building blocks of the message structure of language. The inference-boundary (IB) model is presented and justified as an explanatory model of the message structure of the clause and, above it, the text. It views theme as an element that is capable of generating a boundary of acceptability within which it is permissible for the rheme to occur. It explains why and how an initial element is considered to be thematic. The IB model also acknowledges the operation of a principle ¿ the principle of acceptable message development ¿ that underlies all that we say and write. This principle forms the basis of a simple test to identify and delimit the thematic portion.