This volume has its origin in a selection of the papers presented at the Second ELC International Postgraduate Conference on English Linguistics (ELC2), held at the University of Vigo in October 2009 and designed and organised by postgraduate students belonging to the English Departments of the Universities of Vigo and Santiago de Compostela. The purpose of the conference was to allow young professional researchers to share and survey their current views on linguistic research. Four of the ten chapters included address the diachronic change undergone by particular lexical items, namely the morphosemantic change illustrated by the development of the morpheme punk, the historical evolution of including and included, the origin and semantics of the expletive form adsheartlikins, and the structure and distribution of nominalisations referring to actions or processes. Variation is also approached from a diatopic perspective in the study of expressions of obligation and necessity (must and have to) in New Englishes, the distribution and functions of the discourse marker eh in Channel Island English, and regional variability of vowel phonology in Scottish Standard English. Lastly, three studies address semantics and culture in the field of L2 learning. These contributions focus on the assessment of Lexical Frequency Profile applications in the analysis of Romanian learner English, the role of cultural knowledge in the learning process of English as an International Language, and L1 typicality effects in L2 vocabulary learning.

This book has been shortlisted for an ESSE book award 2012 in English Language and Linguistics, Junior Scholars. This volume approaches the analysis of variation in English from diachronic, diatopic, and contrastive/comparative perspectives. The individual case studies, all closely interrelated, are organized into three parts or sections. Part I (Diachronic Studies) applies a variationist methodology to the analysis of developments in the use of the courtesy marker please, adverbs in -ly, the s- genitive and a number of phrasal combinations with the verb get. It also examines Early Modern English regional dialect vocabulary. Part II (Diatopic Studies) is concerned with the analysis of several morphological and phonological features in different varieties of English, namely Standard English, Modern Scottish English, Galwegian English, and Black South-African English. Part III (Contrastive Studies) contains four chapters dealing with the contrastive analysis of a number of morphosyntactic features, such as the use of modifiers of adjectives by advanced learners of English, the acquisition and use of aspect by advanced EFL learners with different mother-tongue backgrounds, a comparison of the tempo-aspectual categories of English and Italian, and some of the problems encountered by researchers when compiling and analysing learner corpora of spoken language.

This volume comprises a selection of papers delivered at the Fourth ELC International Postgraduate Conference on Language and Cognition (ELC4). The eleven papers collected here pertain to different areas of linguistics as varied as diachronic linguistics, syntax, pragmatics or psycholinguistics.

The growth experienced by Corpus Linguistics over the last two decades has complicated the definition of the discipline. There is at present no consensus as to what corpus linguistics exactly is. Is it a methodology, a theoretical framework, a research paradigm? The goal of this book is multi-purpose. It provides material for a discussion of the notion of «corpus linguistics», an overt discussion of the limits of this discipline and a comparison of some of the main approaches. And at the same time it offers a collection of selected papers representative of a range of approaches and applications associated with corpus research.

This book updates the latest research in the field of 'English pronunciation', providing readers with a number of original contributions that represent trends in the field. Topics include sociophonetic or sound-symbolic aspects of pronunciation English pronunciation teaching and learning.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive treatment of basic and more advanced research methodologies in applied linguistics and offers a state-of-the-art review of methods particular to various domains within the field. Arranged thematically in 4 parts, across 41 chapters, it covers a range of research approaches, presents current perspectives, and addresses key issues in different research methods, such as designing and implementing research instruments and techniques, and analysing different types of applied linguistics data. Innovations, challenges and trends in applied linguistics research are examined throughout the Handbook. As such it offers an up-to-date and highly accessible entry point into both established and emerging approaches that will offer fresh possibilities and perspectives as well as thorough consideration of best practices. This wide-ranging volume will prove an invaluable resource to applied linguists at all levels, including scholars in related fields such as language learning and teaching, multilingualism, corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, discourse analysis and pragmatics, language assessment, language policy and planning, multimodal communication, and translation.