This chapter examines the acquisition of Welsh in its social and cultural context, with a particular focus on how Welsh being a minority language influences how children speak it. The primary perspective taken will be sociolinguistic, that is variation in children’s Welsh. We review the literature on the linguistic effects of language contact between English as the dominant language on Welsh in the speech of children as well as adults, including discussions of code-switching and diachronic grammatical change. Next, we turn to examining the social factors that have been found to affect children’s acquisition of Welsh, especially language exposure and how this can vary considerably from child to child. The next section reviews one of the main methodological approaches that has been used to collect data in Welsh linguistics, namely corpus data, and considers some of the benefits and challenges that such a method provides for researching child language as well as directing readers to relevant corpora and making some recommendations on considerations for future corpora of children’s Welsh. The chapter concludes with ideas for research directions in this field that the reader may find useful.

Legal language is often ambiguous. Consider: “Only cars and trucks with permits are allowed.” Does [PP with permits] have “wide scope” over the entire series [NP cars and trucks] or “narrow scope” over only the closest noun, [trucks]? Judges often choose narrow scope, citing a legal canon, the “Last Antecedent Rule.” But they sometimes choose wide scope, referencing the “Series Qualifier Canon,” which assigns modifiers to a series. Though judges claim to want to use “most people’s” interpretations, these conflicting choices led us to ask “What WOULD most people say?” We ran three experiments to find out.

Overall, wide scope was preferred. With biased PPs, the preference dropped slightly when the bias matched the last noun, “[NP cars and trucks] [PP with trailers],” but not the first, “[NP trucks and cars] [PP with trailers],” where a universal syntactic “No Crossing Branches principle” limits the PP’s domain. With temporal PPs, “People may park [NP cars and trucks] [PP on weekends],” the preference was also uniformly wide scope, not surprisingly, since these PPs can only modify verbs, not nouns. Taken together, our experiments show how experimental psycholinguistics can offer powerful evidence about how “most people” understand legal language, important information for judges and lawmakers alike.

This chapter introduces the idea of language as a means to communicate ideas to other people. The speech chain – following the path of language from the mind of the speaker through to an acoustic signal, eventually interpreted by the mind of the listener – is introduced as an organizational framework. Of special note, all of the stages between talker and listener can influence the effectiveness of communication. The chapter provides a summary of central challenges associated with spoken language, including categorical perception, time-constrained understanding, flexibility, and multimodal integration. It then introduces several “big picture” themes from the book: stability versus flexibility, the importance of context, bottom-up versus top-down processing, hierarchical organization, the role of task demands, and neuroanatomical considerations related to localization and lateralization.

The chapter provides an introduction to the relationship between politics and semiotics, to Cognitive CDA as a framework for studying politics and semiotics, and to shifts in political performance and media landscapes which demand a multimodal approach to political discourse analysis. It starts by highlighting the symbolic nature of politics and the discursive means by which politics is primarily performed. The historical development of Cognitive CDA is described. The practical aims, theoretical commitments and methodological practices of Cognitive CDA are also discussed. The central position of the media in communicating politics is considered alongside the relationship between political and media institutions. Changes brought about by the advent of the internet and digital social media are discussed with a focus on the new genres of political discourse that have emerged as a result and on the more participatory forms of politics that are potentially afforded. The chapter discusses the rise of right-wing populism that has coincided with changes to the media landscape and the shifts in communicative style by which it is marked.

This chapter provides an overview of corpus-based advances in Construction Grammar. After a brief introduction on kinds of data in linguistics in general and the notion of corpora in particular, I discuss a variety of corpus-based studies categorized into (i) largely qualitative studies, (ii) studies based on frequencies and probabilities, (iii) studies focusing on association strengths, and (iv) statistical as well as machine-learning studies. In each section, representative studies covering a variety of languages and questions are covered with an eye to surveying methodological as well as theoretical advantages. I conclude with an assessment of the state of the art by comparing how recent developments fare relative to Dąbrowska’s discussion of Cognitive Linguistics’s seven deadly sins.

This chapter summarizes the detals of the preceding eight chapters, emphasizing the key role of Caucasus in human (hominin) settlement of Western Eurasia and the connection of the Caucasus to (prehistoric) world events. It also offers some final thoughts about the nature of demographic transitions in prehistory.

This chapter presents solicited feedback from established Caucasus scholars on their ideas for further research priorities.

The final chapter draws some conclusions about the nature and status of stylistics as a subdiscipline of linguistics and the many and varied ways in which stylistics can impact on human society and life. The chapter ends with a ‘manifesto’ which makes the case for stylistics developing a clear identity which will allow its connection with other disciplines to be a mutually enriching relationship. The authors hope that both established scholars and those new to the field will find the chapter useful in reflecting on their own practice.

Concision is about more than writing like Hemingway or following Strunk & White’s edict to eliminate unnecessary words. Instead, concision relies on writers recognizing the myriad redundancies in English, a reflection of its evolution from the collision of Latin, French, and Old English in the decades following the Norman Conquest. Moreover, redundancies also litter English in the form of redundant modifiers, throat-clearing, and metadiscourse. By recognizing these words and phrases, writers can quickly pare sentences to their essentials, without fretting over the havoc deletions can wreak on the meaning of their sentences.

“Writing Is a System” debunks the popular view that writing is an art, best learned by reading selections of good writing and practicing composing. Instead, writing is a system that involves understanding what factors make sentences seem easy to read and paragraphs well organized. This chapter also examines the relevance of readability scores in assessing writing.

A significant part of our work as conversation analysts is to persuade different disciplinary communities of the insights from CA. Here, conversation analysts working within the broader domains of sociology, linguistics, psychology and communication, education, and health services discuss the ways in which our findings may be shaped for publication in journals particular to our own domains, and thereby engage with our wider disciplinary audiences. In the first instance, we situate CA with respect to its development in each of our disciplines and identify the core issues with which CA is engaging. We then examine some of the challenges in presenting CA to our disciplines. These include addressing the question that CA scholars often face from colleagues in those disciplines: ‘Why should this matter to us?’. We finally offer some practical guidance on writing CA for our particular audiences, including: how to manage the length constraints often imposed by journals, the issue of sampling size, and how to balance the demands of transcriptional detail as required by CA with those of clarity and legibility for those not accustomed to it. Such challenges can be highly creative – and worthwhile in showing how CA can enhance received theory in our own disciplines.

This chapter describes the process of building a collection, using the example of other-initiated repairs resolved by repetition. The phenomenon under investigation is shown in the following example: 1. A: you in the bathroom?2. B: huh?3. A: you in the bathroom? The focus of the chapter is more on the way in which the collection evolved and less on the analytic process. Lessons learned from building a collection as well as the strengths of this particular collection are discussed. The chapter also discusses the importance of linking linguistic phenomena, e.g. repetition, to social practices, e.g. other-initiated repair. It argues that tightly constrained collections can allow a clear demonstration of connections between linguistic forms and interactional practices. The chapter stresses how building a collection and conducting an analysis of it can be messy. The methodical process of setting a question, collecting just the right data to answer it, and discovering the answer, is the story we usually tell in our publications. This chapter instead tries to illuminate and illustrate just how rocky the path to completion can be.

This chapter highlights the dangers of linguistic inaccuracies and misunderstandings that permeate discussions on blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), impacting policy and legal outcomes. It identifies two critical issues hindering effective legislation: a lack of comprehension of blockchain technology’s technical nuances and a failure to appreciate the link between blockchain-related terminology and the intricacies of varying blockchain protocols. By borrowing frequently misused terms without questioning their technical accuracy, policy-makers may unwittingly stifle innovation and develop legal regimes that are ill-suited for their intended purpose. This chapter explores six specific language landmines prevalent in blockchain and NFT discussions, urging researchers, lawmakers, industry members, and other stakeholders to bridge the understanding gap. By addressing these linguistic pitfalls, the chapter advocates for informed and comprehensive policy-making that keeps pace with the evolving landscape of blockchain technology and its applications, including NFTs.

In Chapter 3, we are fortunate to have three contributing authors, Susan Poetsch, Denise Angelo and Rhonda Anjilkurri Radley, bringing their research and lived experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.. The chapter describes a dynamic and detailed picture of the multilingualism of communities and the developing ecologies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. Through six real-life vignettes and visits to communities, we meet multilingual Indigenous children in their daily lives, who move between multiple modes of language use, with their families and in school. The chapter highlights the widespread use of new Indigenous languages (including creoles such as Kriol and Yumplatok) and the revival and revitalisation of traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages in some communities. The chapter also highlights Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s ways of using English, and the linguistic challenges faced by many children in school.