No abstract

<p>This paper examines the essential features of a group of constructions that belong to the family of complementary alternation discourse constructions in English. In this group of constructions, X and Y are two situations such that Y is less likely (or more likely) to happen than X. Each member of this group (X Let Alone Y, X Much Less Y, X Never Mind Y, X Not To Mention Y, Not X Nor Y, X Still Less Y, Not X Not Even Y, and X To Say Nothing of Y) introduces subtle changes in focal structure, resulting in changes on the overall coherence of the text. Based on these theoretical explanations, the paper specifies the conditions for the use of one connector with preference over the others. Finally, the paper argues that in these constructions we find two types of cognitive operations at work: simple cognitive operations (negative addition and/or re-association) and operation amalgams, which combine different cognitive operations.</p>

The Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics addresses the interface between these disciplines and offers a platform to scholars who combine both research methodologies to present rigorous and interdisciplinary findings about language in real use. Corpus linguistics and Pragmatics in the past represented two paths of scientific thought, parallel but often mutually exclusive and excluding. Corpus Linguistics, informed by mathematics and statistics, offers a meticuous methodology. Pragmatics is defined by its indefiniteness in interpreting sentence meaning and intended meaning. Recent research shows that both approaches can be very useful if used complementary. Corpus linguistics studies may use pragmatics as a model for the interpretation of data and studies in pragmatics can turn to corpus linguistics for data analysis. This yearbook will give the readers insight in how they can use pragmatics to explain real corpus data and from there develop and refine its theory. This yearbook is aimed at researchers from the areas of corpus linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language education, psycholinguistics, and theoretical linguistics. The yearbook editor invites proposals for topical sections, individual articles, and book reviews.

No abstract

The present article investigates a set of discourse connectors in the academic lecture genre from the viewpoint of the inseparable pair of pragmatics and cognition. Making use of the MICASE corpus for data retrieval, a selection of discourse constructions encoding comparative contrastive meanings are analysed and their distinctive features are critically described and explained. The aim is to show how each particular genre promotes the use of certain constructions. The MICASE database reveals that, among all the subgroups of complementary contrastive constructions, some seem incompatible with the academic lecture contexts by virtue of the particular characteristics of this specific genre.