LINGUIST List 15.1106

Mon Apr 5 2004

Books: Discourse Analysis: Scollon, Scollon/Fry

Editor for this issue: Neil Salmond <neillinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. kkaneta, Discourses in Place: Scollon, Scollon
2. kkaneta, Ellipsis and wa-marking in Japanese Conversation: Fry

		
Title: Discourses in Place
Subtitle: Language in the Material World
			
Publication Year: 2003
Publisher:	Routledge (Taylor and Francis) 
		http://www.routledge.com/
			
Author: Ronald Scollon, Georgetown University 
Author: Suzanne Wong Scollon, Hong Kong Polytechnic University 

Hardback: ISBN: 0415290481, Pages: 258, Price: U.S. $: 95
Paperback: ISBN: 041529049X, Pages: 258, Price: U.S. $: 27.95


Abstract:
			
The way we interpret language depends on where the words we are
reading are placed in the world. Discourses in Place explores how the
physical and material characteristics of language in the world give
meaning to communication. In the book Ron and Suzanne Scollon argue
that we can only interpret the meaning of public texts like road
signs, notices and brand logos by considering the world and culture
that surrounds them. Drawing on a wide range of real examples, from
signs in the Chinese mountains to urban centers in Europe, Asia and
America, the book equips students with the methodology and models they
need to undertake their own research in 'geosemiotics', this key
interface between semiotics and intercultural communication. Including
a 'how to use this book' section, group and individual activities and
a glossary of main terms, the book is essential reading for anyone
with an interest in language and they way we communicate.


Lingfield(s):	Discourse Analysis 
		Pragmatics

Written In: English (Language Code: English)

 See this book announcement on our website:
	 http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=9539

		
Title: Ellipsis and wa-marking in Japanese Conversation
Series Title: Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
			
Publication Year: 2003
Publisher:	Routledge (Taylor and Francis) 
		http://www.routledge.com/
			
Author: John Fry

Hardback: ISBN: 0415967643, Pages: 208, Price: U.S. $: 75


Abstract:
			
This book investigates the operation of two linguistic mechanisms,
ellipsis and wa-marking, in a corpus of colloquial Japanese
speech. Its data set is the CallHome Japanese (CHJ) corpus, a
collection of transcripts and digitized speech data for 120 telephone
conversations between native speakers of Japanese. To make the CHJ
data useful for linguistic research, John Fry annotates the original
transcripts with a comprehensive set of acoustic, phonetic, syntactic,
and semantic tags.

John Fry demonstrates that Japanese conversation obeys certain
principles of argument ellipsis that appear to be language universal:
namely, the tendency to omit transitive and human subjects and the
tendency to express at most one argument per clause. He identifies a
set of syntactic and semantic factors that correlate significantly
with the ellipsis of grammatical particles following a noun
phrase. These factors include the grammatical construction type
(question, idiom), length of the NP, utterance length, proximity of
the NP to the predicate, and the animacy and definiteness of the
NP. The animacy and definiteness constrains are of particular interest
because these too seem to reflect language-universal principles.

Analyzing the CHJ data further, Fry investigates the use and function
of the topic-marking particle wa. His study identifies a set of
semantic and prosodic properties that tend to distinguish wa from the
subject-marking particle ga. This book shows that wa-phrases exhibit
more prominent intonation, as measured by peak F0, than ga-phrases in
the CHJ speech data, contradicting accounts which predict that
ga-phrases, because they are associated with "new" information, should
be more prominent.


Lingfield(s): 	Discourse Analysis
		Syntax
	
Subject Language(s):	Japanese (Language Code: JPN)

Written In: English (Language Code: English)

 See this book announcement on our website:
	 http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=9540