All posts by Manfred

Manfred Sailer Institut für England- und Amerikastudien (Section English Linguistics) Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main Grüneburgplatz 1 D-60629 Frankfurt am Main Germany Homepage: http://user.uni-frankfurt.de/~sailer/ Tel.: +49 - (0)69 - 798 32526 Fax: +49 - (0)69 - 798 32509 E-Mail: sailer "at" em "dot" uni-frankfurt "dot" de
Typology

Honorifics: Types, Data, and Importance for Linguistic Theory

by Assif Am David, Frankfurt a.M.

Honorifics are a linguistic encoding of social relations in a discourse. Therefore, they are closely related to pragmatic and sociolinguistic phenomena. On the other hand, unlike the latter, they are often highly grammaticalised and require not only pragmatic, but also formal consistency.

Honorifics can be divided into three different axis depending on whose honour (or disrespect) is expressed by the utterance. Comrie first introduced the different axes honorifics can refer to: Continue reading Honorifics: Types, Data, and Importance for Linguistic Theory →

Cognitive aspects of language

Animal communication

by Assif Am David, Frankfurt a.M.

It is commonly assumed in linguistics that language is a phenomenon unique to humans. It is normally associated with the Great Leap Forward, an anthropological revolution which took place about 50,000 years ago and gave rise to the behavioural modernity. Language is considered a core factor in this revolution which resulted in a more complex, abstract thought and in larger intricate social organization, possibly by allowing social constructivism, which is a conventional postulation of abstract social entities.

The study of language in animals, often referred to as biolinguistics, attempts to refute this idea. Continue reading Animal communication →

Famous linguists

Chuck Fillmore honored by the ACL

Chuck Fillmore has received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

Chuck Fillmore (1929-2014) has been one of the most influential linguistists in the last 50 years.  His work centers around syntax and lexical semantics. He is one of the founders of Construction Grammar and has developed the theoretical basis of frame semantics. Continue reading Chuck Fillmore honored by the ACL →