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This is a comprehensive description of a language spoken some 450 km offshore from the mainland of Papua New Guinea. The language is remarkable for its phonological, morphological and syntactic complexity. As the sole surviving member of its language family, and with little historical contact with surrounding languages, the language provides evidence of the kind of languages spoken in this part of the world before the Austronesian expansion. The grammar provides detailed information on the phoneme inventory, morphology, syntax and select semantic fields. Remarkable features include a 90 phoneme inventory including unique sounds, a morphology with thousands of non-compositional portmanteau elements, complex rules for negation, and extensive ergative syntax. Unusual patterns are also found in the organization of semantic fields, for example in partonymies of the body, taxonomies of the natural world, verbal semantics and kinship terms. The combination of linguistic 'rara' suggest that linguistic evolution under low contact can yield baroque and unusual patterns. The volume should be of special interest to linguists, typologists, sociolinguists, anthropologists and researchers in Oceania and Melanesia. Endorsement: "This long-awaited grammar is a major contribution to Papuan and general linguistics, providing as it does by far the most comprehensive and accurate grammatical description of a language that has already assumed a position as one of the world's most complicated. Hitherto, the most extensive grammatical description of the language has been the survey-like Henderson (1995), and while Levinson explicitly acknowledges his debt to this earlier grammar and to unpublished work by Henderson, his own detailed grammar clearly takes the level of description and analysis of the language to a completely new level. In particular, Levinson's grammar makes clear precisely to what extent and in what ways the language's morphology is complex beyond even what most studies on morphologically complex languages envisage. In addition, it provides a much more detailed account of the language's syntax, based on a judicious combination of corpus attestation and careful elicitation (incl. using the kits developed by Levinson's group at the MPI for Psycholinguistics). The grammar thus not only fills a major lacuna in our knowledge of the non-Austronesian languages of the New Guinea area, but also provides grist for future studies on the implications of the language's complexities."Bernard Comrie, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Language isolate.

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Spatial language - that is, the way languages structure the spatial domain - is an important area of research, offering insights into one of the most central areas of human cognition. In this collection, a team of leading scholars review the spatial domain across a wide variety of languages. Contrary to existing assumptions, they show that there is great variation in the way space is conceptually structured across languages, thus substantiating the controversial question of how far the foundations of human cognition are innate. Grammars of Space is a supplement to the psychological information provided in its companion volume, Space in Language and Cognition. It represents a new kind of work in linguistics, 'Semantic Typology', which asks what are the semantic parameters used to structure particular semantic fields. Comprehensive and informative, it will be essential reading for those working on comparative linguistics, spatial cognition, and the interface between them.

Lexicology. Semantics --- Psycholinguistics --- Space and time in language. --- Psycholinguistics. --- Semantics. --- Semantics --- Space and time in language --- Language and languages --- Formal semantics --- Semasiology --- Semiology (Semantics) --- Comparative linguistics --- Information theory --- Lexicology --- Meaning (Psychology) --- Language, Psychology of --- Psychology of language --- Speech --- Linguistics --- Psychology --- Thought and thinking --- Psychological aspects --- Psycholinguistique --- Sémantique --- Arts and Humanities --- Language & Linguistics --- Espace et temps dans le langage

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The core use of language is in face-to-face conversation. This is characterized by rapid turn-taking. This turn-taking poses a number central puzzles for the psychology of language. Consider, for example, that in large corpora the gap between turns is on the order of 100 to 300 ms, but the latencies involved in language production require minimally between 600 ms (for a single word) or 1500 ms (for as simple sentence). This implies that participants in conversation are predicting the ends of the incoming turn and preparing in advance. But how is this done? What aspects of this prediction are done when? What happens when the prediction is wrong? What stops participants coming in too early? If the system is running on prediction, why is there consistently a mode of 100 to 300 ms in response time? The timing puzzle raises further puzzles: it seems that comprehension must run parallel with the preparation for production, but it has been presumed that there are strict cognitive limitations on more than one central process running at a time. How is this bottleneck overcome? Far from being 'easy' as some psychologists have suggested, conversation may be one of the most demanding cognitive tasks in our everyday lives. Further questions naturally arise: how do children learn to master this demanding task, and what is the developmental trajectory in this domain? Research shows that aspects of turn-taking, such as its timing, are remarkably stable across languages and cultures, but the word order of languages varies enormously. How then does prediction of the incoming turn work when the verb (often the informational nugget in a clause) is at the end? Conversely, how can production work fast enough in languages that have the verb at the beginning, thereby requiring early planning of the whole clause? What happens when one changes modality, as in sign languages - with the loss of channel constraints is turn-taking much freer? And what about face-to-face communication amongst hearing individuals - do gestures, gaze, and other body behaviors facilitate turn-taking? One can also ask the phylogenetic question: how did such a system evolve? There seem to be parallels (analogies) in duetting bird species, and in a variety of monkey species, but there is little evidence of anything like this among the great apes. All this constitutes a neglected set of problems at the heart of the psychology of language and of the language sciences. This Research Topic contributes to advancing our understanding of these problems by summarizing recent work from psycholinguists, developmental psychologists, students of dialog and conversation analysis, linguists, phoneticians, and comparative ethologists.

Psycholinguistics. --- Sociolinguistics. --- Etiquette. --- Conversation. --- Pragmatics. --- Speech acts (Linguistics) --- Social interaction. --- Human interaction --- Interaction, Social --- Symbolic interaction --- Exchange theory (Sociology) --- Psychology --- Social psychology --- Pragmalinguistics --- General semantics --- Language and languages --- Logic, Symbolic and mathematical --- Semantics (Philosophy) --- Talking --- Colloquial language --- Etiquette --- Oral communication --- Ceremonies --- Condolence, Etiquette of --- Manners --- Politeness --- Usages --- Conduct of life --- Manners and customs --- Language and society --- Society and language --- Sociology of language --- Language and culture --- Linguistics --- Sociology --- Integrational linguistics (Oxford school) --- Language, Psychology of --- Psychology of language --- Speech --- Thought and thinking --- Illocutionary acts (Linguistics) --- Speech act theory (Linguistics) --- Speech events (Linguistics) --- Philosophy --- Social aspects --- Sociological aspects --- Psychological aspects --- face-to-face conversation --- psychology --- psychology of language --- psycholinguists --- turn-taking --- language sciences --- language --- Frontiers in Psychology --- Intonation (linguistics) --- Prosody (linguistics) --- Sign language --- Stroke --- Syntax --- Utterance

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Demonstratives play a crucial role in the acquisition and use of language. Bringing together a team of leading scholars this detailed study, a first of its kind, explores meaning and use across fifteen typologically and geographically unrelated languages to find out what cross-linguistic comparisons and generalizations can be made, and how this might challenge current theory in linguistics, psychology, anthropology and philosophy. Using a shared experimental task, rounded out with studies of natural language use, specialists in each of the languages undertook extensive fieldwork for this comparative study of semantics and usage. An introduction summarizes the shared patterns and divergences in meaning and use that emerge.

Lexicology. Semantics --- Grammar --- Comparative linguistics --- Grammar, Comparative and general --- Language and languages --- Language and languages. --- Semantics (Philosophy). --- Deixis. --- Demonstratives. --- Cross-cultural studies. --- Philosophy. --- Semantics (Philosophy) --- Intension (Philosophy) --- Logical semantics --- Semantics (Logic) --- Semeiotics --- Significs --- Syntactics --- Unified science --- Logic, Symbolic and mathematical --- Logical positivism --- Meaning (Psychology) --- Philosophy, Modern --- Semiotics --- Signs and symbols --- Symbolism --- Analysis (Philosophy) --- Definition (Philosophy) --- Foreign languages --- Languages --- Anthropology --- Communication --- Ethnology --- Information theory --- Philology --- Linguistics