Johan van der Auwera

This monograph deals with the ‘aboutness’ of language. First, the sense in which language ‘is about’ or ‘reflects’ both reality and a mental picture of reality is turned into a cornerstone of a reflectionist or ‘Speculative Grammarian’ semantics and pragmatics. Second, the ‘Speculative Grammar’ idea is made concrete in a logico-linguistic account of the way language ‘is about’ the whole of reality as well as about certain fractions of it. Third, the reflectionist perspective is used for a universalist account of the way speech acts ‘are about’ their subjects, topics, and foci.

Speculative grammar and the semantics and pragmatics of focus

What Do We Talk About When We Talk?

Bernd Kortmann

Open publicationThe Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The book supplies profiles of the language families of Europe, including the sign languages. It also discusses the areal typology, paying attention to the Standard Average European, Balkan, Baltic and Mediterranean convergence areas. Separate chapters deal with the old and new minority languages and with non-standard varieties. A major focus is language politics and policies, including discussions of the special status of English, the relation between language and the church, language and the school, and standardization. The history of European linguistics is another focus as is the history of multilingual European 'empires' and their dissolution. The volume is especially geared towards a graduate and advanced undergraduate readership. It has been designed such that it can be used, as a whole or in parts, as a textbook, the first of its kind, for graduate programmes with a focus on the linguistic (and linguistics) landscape of Europe.

A Comprehensive Guide

The Languages and Linguistics of Europe

Raphael Salkie

Pierre Busuttil

Main description: This volume presents strongly empirical, corpus-based studies of a range of English modal auxiliaries and modal constructions in specific uses. It also approaches some of the classic issues in the field of modality from new perspectives, notably that of the 'Theory of Enunciative Operations' developed by the French linguist Antoine Culioli and his colleagues.

Theory and Description

Modality in English

This volume presents two kinds of studies on English modality. On the one hand, there are strongly empirical, corpus-based studies of individual uses of English modal auxiliaries and modal constructions, such as may in interrogatives, might in concessive clauses, shall and may vs must in legal English, the use of surprised if and surprising if constructions, the use and history of adhortative constructions, or the modal-aspectual use of come to in I came to realize that X. The book also contains work that presents new views on some of the classical issues, like the relations between modality and time, modality and commitment, modals and (inter)subjectivity. A special place is given to work that approaches the English modals from the perspective of the 'Theory of Enunciative Operations' developed by the French linguist Antoine Culioli and his colleagues. Thus the book provides new perspectives and answers on basic questions about modality, in general, and its expression in English, in particular.

Ekkehard Konig

Provides a unique, up-to-date survey of twelve Germanic languages from English and German to Faroese and Yiddish.

The Germanic Languages

Louis Goossens

Betty Devriendt

A Functionalist Perspective

Complex Structures

Nicole Delbecque

Dirk Geeraerts

Professor of General Linguistics Dirk Geeraerts

The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. The series considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language.

Sociolinguistic, Historical, Comparative

Perspectives on Variation

The Ins and Outs of Predication

Hans Bennis

Sjef Barbiers

Eefje Boef

Gunther De Vogelaer

Margreet van der Ham

The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND) provides a detailed overview of the surprisingly rich syntactic variation found in 267 dialects of Dutch at the beginning of the 21st century. More than 200 full color maps show the geographic distributiebon of over 100 syntactic variables. Many of these variables involve phenomena that are absent form the standard language and thus of great descriptive and theoretical importante. A state-of-the art linguistic description and commentary accompanies each map, taking into account the results of modern syntactic research as well as historical developments. Volume I (2005) shows the variation in complementisers and complementiser agreement, subject pronouns, subject doubling and subject clitisation after yes/ no, reflexives and reciprocals, relative clauses, question-word doubling and topicalisation. Volume II shows the variation in two- and three verb clusters, interruption of the verb clusters, extraposition and te ‘to’ in the verbal clusters, auxiliary selection, do-insertion, and negation and quantification.

Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects

In this volume Van der Auwera attempts to clarify the idea that language reflects both mind and reality and to elucidate the reflection idea by turning it into the cornerstone of a linguistic theory of meaning.

A speculative and condition-theoretic study

Language and Logic

Marta Carretero

Juana I. Marín-Arrese

Jorge Arús Hita

The book presents new issues and areas of work in modality and evidentiality in English(es), and in relation to other European languages (French, Galician, Lithuanian, Spanish). Given the complexity of the relations among modal and evidential expressions, their constant diachronic evolution, and the variation found in different English-speaking areas, and in different genres and discourse domains, the volume addresses the following issues: the conceptual nature of modality, the relationship between the domains of modality and evidentiality, the evolution and current status of the modal auxiliaries and other modal expressions, the relationship with neighbouring grammatical categories (tense, aspect, mood), and the variation in different discourse domains and genres, in modelling stance and discourse identities.

Core, Periphery and Evidentiality

English Modality

Jan Nuyts

This handbook offers an in depth and comprehensive state of the art survey of the linguistic domains of modality and mood. An international team of experts in the field examine the full range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the many facets of the phenomena involved. Following an opening section that provides an introduction and historical background to the topic, the volume is divided into five parts. Parts 1 and 2 present the basic linguistic facts about the systems of modality and mood in the languages of the world, covering the semantics and the expression of different subtypes of modality and mood respectively. The authors also examine the interaction of modality and mood, mutually and with other semantic categories such as aspect, time, negation, and evidentiality. In Part 3, authors discuss the features of the modality and mood systems in five typologically different language groups, while chapters in Part 4 deal with wider perspectives on modality and mood: diachrony, areality, first language acquisition, and sign language. Finally, Part 5 looks at how modality and mood are handled in different theoretical approaches: formal syntax, functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, and formal semantics.

The Oxford Handbook of Modality and Mood

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Johan van der Auwera

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