This chapter presents on overview of present-day Welsh English(es) with a focus on regional variation and diachronic developments over the past fifty years. The Anglicisation of Wales has progressed in several phases over the centuries, which is why the accents and dialects of English in Wales are regionally distinctive, the Welsh language and neighbouring English English dialects impacting them to different degrees. The chapter takes the Survey of Anglo-Welsh dialects (Parry 1999) as a starting point and uses corpus and survey data compiled in the twenty-first century as well as recent research publications, thereby examining the main trends of development in the different domains of English. Phonological variation and change are described across a broad North–South continuum, whereas in morphosyntax the greatest differences can be found between the predominantly English-speaking Southeast and the bilingual, historically Welsh-dominant North and West Wales. In regional lexicon, sociolinguistically and nationally salient items are relatively few, originating from both Welsh and English. Finally, the chapter draws attention to recent research, and highlights some caveats and future directions for the study of English in Wales.

In diachronic development and contemporary structure of Slavic lexicons, we see influences of universal semantic mechanisms and specific historical processes, of language development, and of language contact. Old Church Slavonic played a role in forming Slavic vocabulary, especially in Russian, where specific or colloquial synonyms contrast with abstract or formal (golova ‘head as body part’ vs. glava ‘head as top in a hierarchy’). Semantic divergence of Proto-Slavic roots creates inter-lingual enantiosemy (e.g., Rus. čerstvyj ‘stale’ vs. Cze. čerstvý ‘fresh’). To compare languages we use regular abstract semantic relations, e.g. synonymy, antonymy, or lexical functions Magn, Oper. Linguistic expressions may differ, but we find similar semantic oppositions and derivation mechanisms. The languages share the same types of antonymy, albeit using different prefixes. Semantic bleaching patterns also agree: adjectives meaning ‘scary’ develop to mean ‘high degree’. Motion verbs such as ‘go’ come to mean process or result. We give case studies of lexical relations: Polish synonyms honor vs. cześć, Russian pravda vs. istina.

Chapter 14 discusses what it means to “know” a word and how learners can grow their vocabulary while learning a new language. Incidental and intentional vocabulary learning are defined as authors make connections to the ways in which teachers can support their classes. In addition, individual differences that have been found to impact vocabulary learning are presented, along with comprehension strategies for readers to try out.

This chapter analyzes how languages are acquired in multilingual contexts and focuses on the development of phonological competence, morphosyntactic skills, and vocabulary. We discuss the differences and similarities that monolingual and bilingual children may show in language development, as well as possible advantages and disadvantages related to bilingualism. We explain that simultaneous exposure to two (or more) languages does not cause confusion or developmental delays, as is often feared by caregivers. We demonstrate that simultaneous bilinguals generally reach language milestones at the same age as monolinguals.

This chapter consists of a lexicon of all Latin loanwords in Greek, as well as many of the codeswitches and words that have been claimed to be Latin borrowings but do not meet our criteria for loanwords (because they are very rare, unintegrated, marked as foreign, not necessarily ancient, not necessarily derived from Latin, semantic extensions, superseded readings, etc.). Evidence for (or against) considering the word a Latin loanword is provided, with references to further discussions (both elsewhere in this book and in other scholarship).

What is a word? Are names (of people, places, gods, buildings, etc.) words? In antiquity spelling was not standardised, and gender, suffixation, and inflectional categories could also be variable: what kind of divergences indicate that a variant form found in an ancient source should be considered a distinct word from other related forms? Although such questions cannot be definitively answered, the approach taken in this book is clarified and justified by detailed comparison with other lexica.

There is, typically, some resistance when the word grammar is mentioned, especially if it is in the context of a textbook. That is because grammar is often seen as something that must be forced on students. As with most ideas of freedom, compulsion in grammatical education is resisted when people see no value in it. Another reason for resistance to grammar is because formal grammar (beyond a few basics) was dropped from the education system in many English-speaking countries around 30 years ago, and it is thus unfamiliar, or even ‘strange’. Generations of students have been convinced that they do not need to ‘do’ grammar, since they can already speak the language quite fluently. There is even the belief, articulated by people who are most typically monolingual in English, which is that grammar is only for people who need to be taught how to speak English; that is other people.

This stage of the journey focuses on concepts as candidates for word meaning. It contains a discussion of several versions of the mentalistic/representational approach to word meaning, also assessing them for candidacy for a general theory of meaning in language that covers words, sentences, utterances, and discourses, pursued in the upcoming stages. It foregrounds the role of context in determining lexical content and the associated ‘food for thought’ questions.

This chapter presents a systematic linguistic classification and analysis of the forms of verbal silences. While verbal silences cover unarticulated verbal signifiers chosen by the addresser (holding the floor) as a verbal means of expression (in place of particular articulated speech) signifying meaningful content, the forms of verbal silence are identified and determined by the speech grounding it. These speech forerunners are grammatical or lexical stumps signalling the location, category and content of the verbal silence in the specific utterance. These ruptured words, grammatical or lexical particles that are articulated without their required complementation, or intertextual spaces are overtly fragmented and so perceived as complete only once the verbal silence component is assumed. Verbal silence as a signifier is studied and presented from the level of a single phoneme to the level of a complete discourse or text, in line with the conventional division of linguistic into phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics-lexicon. Incorporating the study of absence as something (rather than nothing) in linguistic exploration compels us to refine notions such as ‘the zero sign’ and ellipsis, and sheds new light broadening linguistic phenomena such as suppletion and onomatopoeia.

We develop a large set of pseudowords that systematically varies length and phonotactic probability and obtain acceptability ratings using an online interface. We find that phonotactic likelihood and the presence of an apparent morphological parse both significantly predict acceptability; pseudowords containing known morphemes are more acceptable than otherwise comparable pseudowords that do not. We find support for the conjecture that novel words with apparent morphology are advantaged as additions to the lexicon. The resulting lexicon, as observed, is one in which long words are not a random sampling of phonotactically acceptable wordforms, but instead tend to be completely or partially decomposable into morphemes.

This chapter gives a sample list of more than twenty Hausa lexical retentions from Proto-Chadic and a comparable list of basic Hausa words without cognates in sister Chadic languages. Also included is a discussion of interesting individual etymologies including boko ‘Western practices’, kasuwa ‘market’, laba ‘pound (weight)’, and zuciya ‘heart’.

Carl Christian Erhard Schmid’s Lexicon for the Easier Use of the Kantian Writings defines technical terms in the Critical philosophy. The lexicon offers insight into Schmid’s understanding of the concepts relevant to free will and anticipates his later position that freedom is restricted to moral actions. The text is particularly noteworthy for its entry on autonomy. There Schmid asserts that free actions and morally good actions are synonymous.

Continental West Germanic and North Germanic languages have been spoken in the Americas for several hundred years, and many are alive as heritage languages today, though often used only by elderly speakers. This chapter examines these languages from several perspectives. First, we look at social and historical contexts of bilingualism. Second, we describe the varieties used, e.g., the extent to which people knew a standard language, along with associated language attitudes and ideologies. Third, we look at key structural properties of Germanic heritage languages with examples from phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, and the lexicon, revealing parallels in development and change across languages. Finally, we note some patterns and language maintenance and shift.

This chapter reviews the current landscape of ontological and lexical resources that motivated the development of the Rich Event Ontology (REO). Aimed at a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, REO functions as a conceptual organization of event types that facilitates mapping between FrameNet, VerbNet, and the Entities, Relations, and Events corpus annotation from the Linguistic Data Consortium.