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This volume is dedicated to Professor Piotr Stalmaszczyk, Head of the Department of English and General Linguistics at the University of Łódź, on the occasion of his 60^th birthday. It includes texts written by his students, colleagues and friends, dealing with a variety of urgent, widely discussed topics in the contemporary language studies. Spanning contributions from language history, philosophy, rhetoric and argumentation, methodology, and discourse studies, it provides an authoritative outline of the field and a timely response to the existing challenges, thus making for a concise handbook of modern linguistics. It is recommended to graduate students of philology, as well as researchers working in linguistics and other disciplines within the broad spectrum of humanities and social sciences.

This book marks ten years of language test development and language testing research in Austria. Part I describes the development of large-scale tests at all levels of the educational system. The documentation covers German as the language of instruction for the majority of pupils, the so-called modern foreign languages English, French, Italian and Spanish, as well as the classical languages Latin and Ancient Greek. Part II brings together a considerable body of research which has been conducted in the course and the wake of the development and implementation of the new assessment philosophy during the past ten years. The studies are accommodated in a framework of test validation, which could serve as orientation for future research in language testing in Austria.

Das Buch blickt auf zehn Jahre professioneller Testentwicklung und Sprachtestforschung in Österreich zurück. Teil I beschreibt die Entwicklung von Testsystemen auf allen Ebenen des Bildungssystems. Die Dokumentation umfasst Deutsch, das für die große Mehrheit Unterrichtssprache ist, die sogenannten modernen Fremdsprachen Englisch, Französisch, Italienisch und Spanisch sowie die klassischen Sprachen Latein und Altgriechisch. Teil II umfasst eine beachtliche Anzahl von Untersuchungen, die während und nach der Entwicklung und Implementierung der neuen Prüfungsphilosophie in den letzten zehn Jahren durchgeführt wurden. Die Untersuchungen werden in ein Validierungskonzept eingeordnet, das als Orientierung für zukünftige Sprachtestforschung in Österreich dienen könnte.

From the early 1940s through the 1960s, some of the most important articles in rhetoric and composition were written by University of Chicago faculty, and it was these articles that became the touchstones of rhetorical education in the institutional return to rhetoric in the latter half of the twentieth century. Despite the immense rhetorical output of these University of Chicago professors, there has not been, to date, a book-length treatment of why these writers focused their attention on the importance of rhetoric in the writing class. Not only that, but there has not been a revisionist account of how these articles were constructed or how the teaching of rhetoric and composition has often been misguided as a result of an uncritical acceptance of these articles in the rhetorical tradition. By organizing these articles based on their University of Chicago context, Rhetoric at the University of Chicago sheds new light on the beginnings of rhetoric and composition and demonstrates the significance of historical context in avoiding the misuse of these articles as foundationalist rhetorical history.

The study presents a systematic and complete morpho-syntactic analysis of Czech nominal phrases in a generative framework, based on universal structures and morpho-syntactic principles. The author cites relevant studies in the field, assuming that morphology results from steps in syntactic derivations that reflect the underlying structure (Radically Distributed Morphology). Theoretical claims are based on examples (including corpus data) and contrasted paradigms. Most data come from Czech, but other languages are also used to demonstrate more universal characteristics of the phenomena. The paradigms cover (i) the structure and feature content of nominal projections including adjectives, possessives and quantifiers, and (ii) agreements with nominal constituents such as pronominals and coordinates.

Il libro traccia la storia della lessicografia italiano-polacco-italiano nel periodo compreso tra il 1856 (pubblicazione del primo dizionario) fino al 1946. Sono analizzati dizionari di tre personaggi chiave del periodo considerato: Erazm Rykaczewski, Ignacy Pląskowski e Fortunato Giannini. Grazie a fonti e documenti d'archivio sono state ricostruite le loro biografie e sono stati analizzati i loro legami con l'Italia e con lo studio dell'italiano. Nella seconda parte del libro vengono studiate in dettaglio la macro- e la microstruttura dei dizionari per scoprire le loro funzioni e capire il loro ruolo nei contatti linguistici e culturali italiano-polacchi.

This book investigates possible common objects of inquiry in philosophy of language and literature. The topics discussed include proper names (analyzed from different theoretical perspectives), fictional names, truth in fiction, ontological status and metaphysics of fictional characters, metaphor, representation, interpretation, and other issues connecting research in philosophy of language with philosophy of literature. Theoretical frameworks include Millian semantics, Fregean semantics, hybrid semantics, realism, antirealism, and metaphorical expressivism.

This study provides a comprehensive examination of Middle English names of medical preparations found in the available medical works produced in the 14th and 15th centuries, and in a number of dictionaries. Altogether over 1600 references to medicaments have been collected. They have been divided into three major categories: general terms denoting medical preparations, terms denoting dosage forms, and terms denoting specifics. The analysis concentrates on the origin of the terms, their structure, and their distribution and presentation in texts representing different traditions of medical writing.

Der Band vereint linguistische Studien, die sich mit dem Zusammenwirken des Konventionalisierten und der Variation beschäftigen. Anhand konkreter Beispiele analysieren die Beiträge das Zusammenspiel zwischen Konventionalisierung und Variation, fragen nach den Gründen der Entstehung des Konventionellen und beschreiben das Variationspotenzial bzw. die Variationsrestriktionen. Die Beispiele decken das breite Spektrum zwischen eher grammatischen und eher lexikalischen Strukturen ab, lassen sich aber kaum eindeutig einem dieser Pole zuordnen. Somit liefern sie gute Nachweise für den ebenenübergreifenden Charakter des Konventionellen, der aber nur vor dem Hintergrund der Variation adäquat verstanden werden kann. Mehrere Beiträge diskutieren explizit die Vor- und Nachteile der theoretischen Verortung solcher Wortverbindungen im Rahmen der existierenden Paradigmen (Phraseologieforschung, Konstruktionsgrammatik usw.).

This volume reports on programs to revitalize and maintain languages of Thailand, with a particular focus on small enclave languages and school-based revitalization programs. Issues of language status, cultural heritage and identity are explored. The approximately 70 languages of Thailand belong to five language families: Tai (24), Austroasiatic (23), Austronesian (3), Sino-Tibetan (18) and Hmong-Mien (2). Currently, fifteen of these languages are classified as seriously endangered. This volume discusses language revitalization efforts involving six Mon-Khmer groups (Maniq, Chong, Nyah Kur, So, Mlabri, Lavue); four Thai-related groups (Phetburi western central Thai, Phutai, Lao, Nyaw); two Austronesian groups (Moklen, Patani Malay); and one Tibeto-Burman group (Bisu). The book provides a framework and model for future developments in revitalizing Thailand’s indigenous languages.