Nonverbal means as regulators in communication: sociocultural perspectives

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Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism)

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a constraint-based or declarative approach to linguistic knowledge, which analyses all descriptive levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) with feature value pairs, structure sharing, and relational constraints. In syntax it assumes that expressions have a single relatively simple constituent structure. This volume provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the framework. Various chapters discuss basic assumptions and formal foundations, describe the evolution of the framework, and go into the details of the main syntactic phenomena. Further chapters are devoted to non-syntactic levels of description. The book also considers related fields and research areas (gesture, sign languages, computational linguistics) and includes chapters comparing HPSG with other frameworks (Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Construction Grammar, Dependency Grammar, and Minimalism)

Space and place as expressive categories in videogames

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis sets out to explore some of the ways in which videogames use space as a means of expression. This expression takes place in two registers: representation and embodiment. Representation is understood as a form of expression in which messages and ideas are communicated. Embodiment is understood as a form of expression in which the player is encouraged to take up a particular position in relation to the game. This distinction between representation and embodiment is useful analytically but the thesis attempts to synthesise these modes in order to account for the experience of playing videogames, where representation and embodiment are constantly happening and constantly influencing and shaping each other. Several methods are developed to analyse games in a way that brings these two modes to the fore. The thesis attempts to arrive at a number of spatial aesthetics of videogames by adapting methods from game studies, literary criticism, phenomenology, onomastics (the study of names), cartographic theory, choreography and architectural and urban formation analysis

Using a word knowledge framework to research vocabulary

The study of vocabulary acquisition is not exactly a new area, but previous research and hypothesizing has failed to produce a coherent overall theory which adequately describes it. This is partly because of the complexity of the subject. One method of reducing the complexity is to work with the individual components of vocabulary knowledge, in an attempt to understand the whole by first better understanding the parts. The word knowledge listing proposed by Nation (1990) is adopted in this thesis as a framework from which to study vocabulary. Chapter 1 introduces the word knowledge framework. Chapter 2 provides a literature review which summarizes the research concerning each of the eight types of word knowledge. Chapter 3 reports on a study which attempts to quantify native and non-native intuitions of word frequency. Chapter 4 describes how a procedure for weighting word association responses was developed. Chapter 5 does the same for a measure of collocational knowledge. Chapter 6 applies the word knowledge research paradigm to the evaluation of the vocabulary items on the TOEFL test. Chapter 7 reports on a longitudinal study of four non-native subjects which tracked their incremental acquisition of spelling, association, collocation, grammar, and meaning knowledge for eleven words over one year. Chapter 8 examines the data from the longitudinal study to see if the various kinds of word knowledge are learned in a developmental sequence. Chapter 9 concludes the thesis by giving the author's opinions about the strengths and weaknesses of the reported course of research

Multilevel dynamics of language diversity and disparity in Oceania

There are more than 7,000 languages on our planet today and they are not evenly distributed over the population. Why might this be? This thesis explores the dynamics of language diversification in Remote Oceania, where some islands have 20 times the number of languages of others. In this thesis I investigate, first, environmental and social factors of language proliferation; second, grammatical and lexical dissimilarity of island groups; third, stability of grammatical features and grammatical conservatism of Oceanic languages; and fourth the particular case of language variation in Samoan. Remote Oceania consists of Temotu, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Polynesia and Micronesia. The region was settled more recently than the rest of Oceania (3,500 years ago) and entirely by Austronesian speakers. Through studies in archaeology, history and linguistics much is known of migration patterns and societal organisation. The comparatively shallow time depth, relatedness of the languages and established knowledge about the history of this region makes it an ideal base for understanding of language diversification. There is a large discrepancy between the number of languages per island group in Remote Oceania. There are over 100 languages in Vanuatu and but one in Samoa. What could be the cause of this discrepancy? Scholars have suggested reasons such as societal organisation, environmental factors and settlement time. Statistically modelling languages per island group given environmental, archaeological and societal variables in this thesis shows that the primary factors in the proliferation of languages in the sample are likely to be political complexity, time depth and island area. The impact of political complexity is most probably due to the fact that more hierarchical societies lead to more interactions and cohesion over large distances, which reduces language splitting. However, counts of languages are not enough when studying language diversification, it is also important to consider linguistic dissimilarity. Do languages of certain island groups stand out as unusually varied in their structure or vocabulary? The results show that no island group stands out as containing unusually high levels of structural disparity, but that Temotu, New Caledonia and, to a lesser extent, Southern Vanuatu have higher levels of lexical divergence than the rest. This finding is consistent with previous literature on "aberrant" Oceanic languages. This thesis also explores the stability of structural features, and conservatism of Oceanic languages, using computational phylogenetic methods for ancestral state reconstruction. The two computational methods of Maximum Parsimony and Maximum Likelihood methods largely concur with findings in historical linguistics as to the grammar of Oceanic proto-languages. However there are few features which are consistently stable across both methods. The most conservative island group of the Oceanic subgroup is the Bismarck archipelago, which is consistent with established theories of the homeland of the Oceanic subgroup. Among the most structurally progressive are Central Pacific, which runs counter to measurements of the lexical retention rate of the languages there. Finally, we take a closer look at one language of the region in particular and the language variation there - Samoan. While we do not find regional variation that can cause a split, there is still substantial variation present - but tied to the social sphere. Samoa has not historically been centrally governed, but village district chiefly offices may have been more stable and may have been enough to retard internal diversification and splitting. In conclusion, change and diversity is conditioned by many local social, historical and environmental conditions - social structure potentially being one of the most powerful. Structure and lexicon, operate under different evolutionary constraints and can tell different stories of the past