Fwd: from Linguist List: Bulgarian/Leafgren; Czech/Danaher

[Loren A. Billings]

The following two books were announced recently on another list.
As usual, don't reply to me; see the addresses below. --Loren

-------- Original Message --------
Date:  Tue, 24 Sep 2002 11:24:28 +0000
From:  paul at benjamins.com
Subject:  John Leafgren: Pragmatics


Title: Degrees of Explicitness
Subtitle: Information structure and the packaging of Bulgarian
subjects and objects
Series Title: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series

Publication Year: 2002

Publisher: John Benjamins
           http://www.benjamins.com/

Author: John  Leafgren

Hardback: ISBN: 1588112209, Pages: xii, 252 pp., Price: USD 81.00


Abstract:

This book explores factors relevant in the choices speakers and
writers make in regard to explicitness of reference to the subjects
and objects in their utterances. Bulgarian is a particularly
felicitous target language for this type of study, since it possesses
a rich inventory of available packaging techniques, ranging from zero
reference, to various stressed and unstressed single forms, to actual
doubled ("reduplicated") constructions. The study systematically
addresses the need to avoid referential and grammatical ambiguity, and
the crucial influence of emphasis. Another, and perhaps most
interesting central factor is the status of what the communication is
about, which is assessed on two different levels. The book makes use
of data from both published Bulgarian fiction and naturally occurring
oral conversations.  The fundamental similarities between these modes
of communication with respect to noun phrase selection is
demonstrated, but explanations are also proposed for the observable
differences.


Table of Contents

List of tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Subjects
Direct and indirect objects
Conclusion
Notes
Data sources
References
Appendix --- Oral data examples prior to normalization
Index

Lingfield(s): Pragmatics

Subject Language(s): Bulgarian (Language code: BLG)

Written In: English (Language Code: ENG)

[...]

LINGUIST List: Vol-13-2437



-------- Original Message --------
Date:  17 Sep 2002 14:01 GMT
From:  LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de (LE)
Subject:  The Semantics & Discourse Function of Habitual-Iterative Verbs...Czech

The Semantics and Discourse Function of Habitual-Iterative Verbs in
Contemporary Czech

David S. Danaher
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Studies of grammaticalized iterative forms in the Slavic languages are
scarce, and those that do exist are mostly focused on questions of
derivation or historical development and rarely explore the meaning
and function of the verb forms in any depth.  The present study
examines Czech, the Slavic language in which habitual-iterative verbs
are most frequently used and most integrated into the overall system
of tense, aspect, and modality.

Grounded in a corpus of examples taken from contemporary literary
Czech and making use of recent work in both semiotic (Peircean) and
cognitive approaches to language, it demonstrates why feature-based
accounts of the meaning of the iterative form prove inadequate and how
a broader perspective on the question, which takes a semiotic and
cognitive definition of habit as its starting point, contributes to a
clearer understanding of iteration as it is encoded in language.

The study "re-cognizes" the semantics of the habitual-iterative gram
in Czech by showing how the various meanings and functions of the verb
are coherently related to each other given what is involved in the
conceptualization of a habit.  In this regard, the linguistic
expression of habituality is productively viewed as a token of a
larger type of cognitive evaluation that can be termed habitual.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Epigraphs
Introduction

Chapter 1
An Overview of the Corpus

Chapter 2
The Scholarly Context:
Kopecn, Airokova, Kucera, and Filip

Chapter 3
A Semiotic and Cognitive Approach to the Linguistic Expression of
Habituality

Chapter 4
Habitual Verbs and Conceptual Distancing

Chapter 5
The Discourse Function of Habitual Verbs

Chapter 6
A Typology of Iteration

Bibliography

ISBN 3 89586 453 6.
LINCOM Studies in Slavic Linguistics 22.
120pp. USD 54 / EUR 54 / GBP 35.

Books available
-alphabetically arranged by series
-alphabetically arranged by author
-listed by ISBN.
Go to http://www.lincom-europa.com.

LINCOM electronic n.e.w.s.l.e.t.t.e.r. : New books in August/September 2002

http://www.lincom-europa.com

Free copies of LINCOM's catalogue 2002 (project line 12) are now
available from LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de.

LINCOM EUROPA, Freibadstr. 3, D-81543 Muenchen, Germany;
FAX +49 89 62269404;
http://www.lincom-europa.com
LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de.

[...]

LINGUIST List: Vol-13-2399

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