16.3619, Review: Ling Theories: Marmaridou et al. (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3619. Mon Dec 19 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3619, Review: Ling Theories: Marmaridou et al. (2005)

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1)
Date: 15-Dec-2005
From: Luna Beard < BeardL.HUM at mail.uovs.ac.za >
Subject: Reviewing Linguistic Thought 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 20:51:46
From: Luna Beard < BeardL.HUM at mail.uovs.ac.za >
Subject: Reviewing Linguistic Thought 
 

EDITORS: Marmaridou, Sophia; Nikiforidou, Kiki; Antonopoulou, Eleni; 
Salamoura, Angeliki 
TITLE: Reviewing Linguistic Thought
SUBTITLE: Converging Trends for the 21st Century
SERIES: Trends in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2254.html 

Luna Beard, Department of Afro-Asiatic Studies, Sign Language and 
Language Practice, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South 
Africa

The title of this book relates to the theme of the 
conference 'Reviewing linguistic thought: Perspectives into the 21st 
century' that was organized by the faculty of English Studies at the 
University of Athens in 2002.  Both, in turn, relate to the widely 
acknowledged separation of twentieth century linguistics into different 
theoretical frameworks with distinct goals and focus areas.  As the 
editors (2005:1) point out, research originating during the last part of 
the previous century in different parts of the academic community has 
actually promoted interaction in various ways.  The aim of the 2002 
conference was to address common directions.

The contributions included in the book indicate some converging 
trends for linguistics in the 21st century.  It follows from the 
observations in the Introduction that the trends that are most 
prominently represented in this 429 page volume are united in two 
ways:  (i) in their subversion of certain (generative) assumptions that 
have dominated 20th century linguistics, and (ii) in their concern for an 
interdisciplinary perspective in linguistic analysis. It is organized along 
these lines and consists of five parts.

The introduction to Part I provides a brief overview of the framework of 
Cognitive Linguistics, since the three papers included here draw on 
this theoretical perspective. The theme of this section is 'Relaxing 
level boundaries' and it is especially the dichotomy between semantics 
and pragmatics that is explored by Sweetser, Panther and Thornburg, 
and Cornillie.

The title of Part II is 'Focusing on level interaction'.  It draws quite 
heavily on Greek data, as is the case in some of the other papers in 
the subsequent sections.  Jaszczolt continues the 
semantics/pragmatics boundary dispute by giving an overview of the 
main viewpoints followed by a review of the current semantic and 
pragmatic approaches that make use of the notion of defaults.  
Jaszczolt argues in favor of the default modal status of expressions of 
futurity and also points to the need for distinguishing cognitive defaults 
from social/cultural defaults.  In the second paper entitled 'Expressivity 
as an option of tense-aspect in language:  The case of Modern Greek 
imperfective past', Kitis and Tsangalidis postulate a multi-level model 
of linguistic analysis for the description of the data presented.  The 
analysis in the third paper is based on focus phenomena and word 
order variation in Greek.  Here Georgiafentis shows how pragmatically 
motivated prosody interacts with the levels of phonology, syntax, and 
semantics.

All four papers in Part III 'Drawing on different theories' attempt to 
approach the analysis of their respective data from more than one 
vantage point in order to bring together different, but not necessarily 
contrasting, paradigms. The frameworks covered here are Gricean 
pragmatics, practice theory, frame theory, cognitive and functional 
perspectives and different traditions of contrastive linguistics.  The 
starting point in Leeszenberg's 'Greek tragedy as impolite 
conversation:  Toward a practice approach in linguistic theory' is once 
again the semantics/pragmatics boundary, here as in some of the 
other contributions, with reference to Gricean pragmatics. The 
advantages of a frame semantics approach to the study of 
generalized conversational implicatures is emphasized in 
Terkourafi's 'Pragmatic correlates of frequency of use:  the case for a 
notion of minimal context'. In the third paper, 'Metaphor in Greek pain-
constructions: Cognitive and functional perspectives', Lascaratou and 
Marmaridou argue that Halliday's functional analysis and cognitive 
semantics are methodologically compatible, specifically since they are 
both usage-based models.  In 'Contrastive linguistics; A 21st century 
perspective', Kurtes examines the contribution of different linguistic 
approaches to the development of contrastive studies. She focuses 
specifically on the interrelatedness of contrastive linguistics, 
translation theory and error analysis and the European contrastive 
projects of the 1970's and 1980's.

The theme of Part IV, 'Exploring field interaction' refers to the 
relationship among fields such as semiotics, psychology and social 
studies and their contribution to linguistic theory. The phenomena 
examined in this section include language change, bilingualism, code-
switching and politeness.  Christidis opens the section with a broad 
theme, captured by the title 'The nature of language: Twentieth 
century approaches'.  This is followed by papers by Enfield, Walters 
and Kallia.

The theme of the last section is 'Interdisciplinary perspectives on 
modularity'.  There are two contributions included here:  'New 
directions for research on pragmatics and modularity' by Deirdre 
Wilson and 'Hearsay devices and metarepresentation' by Elly 
Ifantidou. The second contribution is closely related to the first one in 
that it explores how the mind-reading sub-module with its relevance-
theoretic apparatus could apply to the interpretation and acquisition of 
two Modern Greek hearsay particles.

This volume thus offers a variety of contributions, perspectives and 
data.  It is particularly well-structured in that, in addition to the general 
introduction, each of the five parts is also opened with an introduction 
that provides a brief overview of the theoretical perspectives and 
approaches that bind the various contributions in that section 
together.  In this way the editors' views on converging trends for the 
21st Century are also clarified. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Luna Beard is a researcher in the Department of Afro-Asiatic Studies, 
Sign language and Language Practice at the University of the Free 
State in Bloemfontein, South Africa.





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