New Books: Functional Linguistics

[Tony Schiavo]

John Benjamins Publishing would like to call your attention to the
following new titles in the field of Functional Linguistics:


ESSAYS ON LANGUAGE FUNCTION AND LANGUAGE TYPE
DEDICATED TO T. GIVÓN
Joan Bybee, John Haiman & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.)
1997  vi, 480 pp.
US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 522 2  Price: US$99.00
Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 2168 5  Price: Hfl. 195,--
John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com
For further information via e-mail: service at benjamins.com

In their subject matter and in their theoretical orientation all the papers
in this volume reflect the powerful influence of T. Givón. Most of them
deal with questions of morphosyntactic typology, pragmatics, and
grammaticalization theory. Many of them are directly based on extensive
fieldwork on local languages of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the
Pacific. Others are based on statistical analyses of extensive written and
spoken corpora of texts.


CONVERSATION
COGNITIVE, COMMUNICATIVE AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES
T. Givón (ed.)
1997  viii, 302 pp.  Typological Studies in Language, 34
US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 643 1  Price: $89.00
           Paper: 1 55619 644 X  Price: $29.95
Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 2929 5  Price: Hfl. 150,--
                   Paper: 90 272 2930 9  Price: Hfl. 60,--

John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com
For further information via e-mail: service at benjamins.com
The papers in this volume were originally presented at the Symposium on
Conversation, held at the University of New Mexico in July 1995. The
symposium brought together scholars who work on face-to-face communication
from a variety of perspectives: social, cultural, cognitive and
communicative. The aim for both the symposium and this volume has been to
challenge some of the prevailing dichotomies in discourse studies: First,
the cleavage between the study of information flow and the study of social
interaction. Second, the theoretical division between speech-situation
models and cognitive models. Third, the methodological split between the
study of spontaneous conversation in natural context and the study of
speech production and comprehension under controlled experimental
conditions. And fourth, the rigid genre distinction between narrative and
conversational discourse.
All four dichotomies have been useful either methodologically or
historically. But important as they may have been in the past, the time has
perhaps come to work toward an integrated approach to the study of human
communication, one that will be less dependent on narrow reductions.
Both the ontological primacy and the methodological challenge of natural
face-to-face communication are self evident. Human language has evolved, is
acquired, and is practiced most commonly in the context of face-to-face
communication. Most past theory-building in either linguistics or
psychology has not benefited from the study of face-to-face communication,
a fact that is regrettable and demands rectification.
Contributors to the volume include: A. Anderson, A. Robertson, K. Kilborn,
S. Beek and E. Dean (Glasgow), W. Chafe (Santa Barbara), J. Coates
(Roehampton), C. Dickinson and T. Givon (Oregon), S. Ervin-Tripp and A.
Kuntay (Berkeley),
P. Linell and N. Korolija (Linkoping), L. Moxey and A. Sanford (Glasgow),
N. Stein, R. Bernas and D. Calicchia (Chicago), T. Trabasso and
A. Ozyurek (Chicago).


--------------------------------------------------------------
Anthony P. Schiavo Jr              Tel: (215) 836-1200
Publicity/Marketing                Fax: (215) 836-1204
John Benjamins North America       e-mail: tony at benjamins.com
PO Box 27519
Philadelphia PA  19118-0519

Check out the John Benjamins web site:
http://www.benjamins.com