Language, a hallmark of human cognition, is a complex and universal tool for conveying thoughts and ideas. This chapter navigates the intricate landscape of language development, spanning its various dimensions. We begin by dissecting language into its components, be it spoken or signed, and explore its dual nature – both specific and universal. The chapter illuminates the brains remarkable capacity to derive meaning from linguistic input, pinpointing the neural structures underpinning language comprehension and production. Distinguishing between language quantity and quality, we delve into the role of contingent learning and experiential adaptation in molding linguistic abilities. Additionally, we ponder the evolutionary origins of language, contemplating its exclusive human attribute. Drawing from a diverse pool of research, including neuroimaging, behavioral assessments, and developmental studies, this chapter offers a comprehensive view of language development. It underscores the profound influence of gene–environment interactions in enabling infants to acquire language organically, without explicit instruction.

Legal texts from the early period contain a number of peculiarities that are not common in classical and post-classical Latin. The chapter discusses some of them: relative clauses introduced by a relative phrase, subjunctive mood, restrictive quod and subordinators introducing impediment argument clauses (quo minus and quo setius). Legalisms represent a subtype of early Latin phenomena in that they need not be features of every text found in that period; they are restricted to legal documents as a specific text type. Some of them are true legal archaisms (siremps, quo setius) – and they can be easily identified as such – that continue to be used in the same text type after the pre-classical period or appear in other text types in a legal context. As for the remaining ones: autonomous relative clauses introduced by a relative phrase and those containing a subjunctive for factual content as well as restrictive quod clauses can be at least considered as characteristic of legal Latin.

Acquiring spoken language is generally quite an effortless process for children who can hear. However, children with hearing loss may experience greater difficulties in supporting their spoken language development. This chapter explores how hearing influences spoken language learning, reviewing the impact of health initiatives, such as universal newborn hearing screening, on lowering the age at detection of congenital hearing loss. Results from large population-based studies highlight how earlier intervention and provision of amplification (hearing aids or cochlear implants) improves language outcomes of children with permanent, sensorineural hearing losses, but outcomes on average still lag those of their peers with normal hearing. General agreement in the literature around permanent hearing losses contrasts with the lack of evidence on the consequences of conductive hearing loss. Most knowledge is drawn from clinical studies of children with otitis media with effusion and examines speech and language outcomes in this context. The auditory system and speech and language abilities seem to recover with age, but there is no consensus on the impact on more discrete abilities. Here, factors impacting language outcomes and the language learning environment are discussed in the context of hearing loss.

This chapter aims to analyze the variation in use and functions of a broad bottom–up selection of discourse markers across four languages from different typological families, namely French and Spanish (Romance), English (Germanic), and Polish (Slavic). Such an endeavor requires that we not only overcome issues of definition and delimitation of the discourse marker category but also design an annotation model encompassing their full functional spectrum, in the perspective of spoken discourse analysis. Our study follows a corpus–based multilingual annotation scheme for functions of (spoken) discourse markers. The functional taxonomy distinguishes between four domains that may be combined with fifteen functions. This taxonomy with two independent levels has been applied to spoken unplanned dialogues in the four languages. The annotations were extracted for contrastive analyses of distribution and variation of discourse markers and their functions. The results indicate that the multilingual annotation scheme may be applied validly to the four different languages. This makes it possible to uncover both similarities and divergences in the functional and semantic distribution of discourse markers. This multidimensional and multilingual approach to discourse markers offers a fine–grained portrait of the variation and of the polyfunctionality of this category across typological families.

The information-structural categories of focus and topic are examined with respect to the constructions in which they can feature, including fronting, dislocation, subject inversion, and presentational sentences. The role and effects of illocutionary force distinctions (e.g., declarative, interrogative, exclamative) and different predication types (thetic vs non-thetic predications) are also taken into consideration. Despite the many similarities, (micro)variation in this area proves quite considerable. In relation to Romance comparative data, this chapter shows that this variation can be accounted for by pragmatic-discourse factors and structural licensing principles that are indeed related to information structure.

Chapter 8 presents a summary of the findings. The limitations of the study are also discussed, including the subtle nature of function, more cross-linguistic verification, comparisons in greater detail, the need for both diachronic and synchronic investigations, and so on. More significantly, spoken language should also be taken into consideration for further improvement.

Most linguists regard writing as an uninteresting and somewhat artificial add-on to spoken language. However, the availability of the written form influences language structure in profound ways at both the individual level (mental grammar) and the social level (language as a conventional system). The lexical and grammatical differences between spoken and written language are partly attributable to different contexts of use and partly to the fact that the written form provides a ‘processing crutch’ which enables speakers to produce more complex structures than they would otherwise be able to produce; structures which are initially learned with the aid of writing may then find their way into the speech of highly literate speakers. In the long run, the cumulative effects of these individual changes lead to changes at the level of the community language. Thus, languages with a long tradition of literacy, such as English, differ in substantial ways from oral languages.

This chapter reports on a poetic inquiry with English language learners in the Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university context. It focuses on the use of haiku – a Japanese poem containing seventeen syllables in a three-line 5–7–5 syllable pattern with the usage of a seasonal reference and a cutting word – and analyses features of spoken language in a corpus of English language haiku poetry written by Japanese second language (L2) learners. The chapter begins by reviewing previous studies of the use of haiku in L2 contexts. It then describes a quantitative, corpus-based study which involved the analysis of textual and linguistic features of English language haiku writing. The data, consisting of a total of 2,017 haiku poems written by 204 first-year engineering students at a Japanese public university, were submitted to statistical analyses. The results illustrate some specific features of English language haiku produced by Japanese L2 writers: haiku poetry is a short, descriptive text which presents each writer’s emotional reactions to his or her daily life, and it also includes such spoken language features as the twelve verbs most frequently used in spoken discourse (Biber and Conrad ), evaluative and emotive adjectives, contractions and vague language. This study suggests that the task of composing haiku in English can play an important role in L2 learning in terms of raising learners’ awareness of typical spoken forms in the target language.

Part I of the book explores literature as a vehicle for developing awareness of spoken language. Byrne and Jones examine dialogues from a literature corpus in comparison with a spoken corpus to understand the extent to which literary dialogues offer a plausible model of conversation. Tomlinson then examines how literature can be used as part of a text-driven approach in order to develop an awareness of pragmatic uses of spoken language. Jones and Cleary examine the effects on input enhancement when using televised literature to develop students’ awareness of features of spoken language. Iida focuses on students’ composed haiku poems and the features of spoken language they contain. Zhao and Liu report on a classroom-based action research study which employed screenplays. Part II explores the use of literature as a means of developing speaking skills. McIlroy examines the effects of discussing poetry at different levels of familiarity with learners Shelton-Strong analyses group discussion from Literature Circles, whereby learners discuss texts they have read. Finally, Fogal and Pinner measure changes in lexical complexity on the speech of learners as they discussed literature.

This chapter analyses conversations from a corpus of literature in order to uncover the extent to which these conversations contain typical features of spoken language, such as vague language and discourse markers. Such features have long been identified as key features of spoken language in corpora based on unscripted conversations (Carter and McCarthy ). The extent to which naturally occurring spoken language is similar to and different from literary conversations has been researched within the field of stylistics (e.g. Hughes ; Semino and Short ), but the extent to which conversations in literature could provide a useful model for learners of English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language (EFL/ESL) is less clear. Drawing upon corpus data from the CLiC Dickens corpus (Mahlberg et al. ) and the BYU-BNC spoken corpus (Davies ), this chapter seeks to explore how often common features occur and whether the frequency of occurrence is significant in comparison to data from unscripted conversations. We also explore the data qualitatively to examine whether the functions of common spoken language features differ or are similar. In doing so, we hope to uncover the extent to which conversations in literature can offer a plausible model of spoken English for EFL or ESL learners.