By analyzing conceptual transfer this volume offers new insight in areal linguistics. Mainland Southeast Asia unifies great linguistic richness consisting of numerous languages and countless varieties of genetically diverse language families. Nevertheless, the area is known as a prime example for linguistic convergence. Exemplified by spatial reference in Thai, Khmer, Lao and Vietnamese, this study reveals conceptual borrowing due to language contact as an areal defining feature. The results from the field-based data analysis may help answer what extent cultural impact can be used as evidence for the existence of linguistic areas. A speaker’s cultural background might have a stronger impact on the choice of spatial language encoding than expected. Method and structure of argumentation can provide a model for similar questions addressing the existence of linguistic areas as well as to other cognitive dimensions within the Southeast Asian area under consideration. Therefore, the study can be seen as a significant contribution to analyze possibly existing conceptual areas empirically and exemplarily. Additionally, the investigation can serve as an important complement to empirical assumptions of conceptual transfer.

A cogent, freshly written synthesis of new and classic work on crosslinguistic influence, or language transfer, this book is an authoritative account of transfer in second-language learning and its consequences for language and thought. It covers transfer in both production and comprehension, and discusses the distinction between semantic and conceptual transfer, lateral transfer, and reverse transfer. The book is ideal as a text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in bilingualism, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and cognitive psychology, and will also be of interest to researchers in these areas.

The selected articles compiled in the present volume are based on contributions prepared for the 17th International L.A.U.D. (Linguistic Agency University of Duisburg) Symposium held at the University of Duisburg on 23-27 March 1992. The 13 papers in this book focus on problems and issues of intercultural communication. The first part is devoted to theoretical aspects related to the interaction of language and culture and deals with the issue from anthropological, cognitive, and linguistic points of view. Part II raises issues of language policy and language planning such as the manipulation of language in intercultural contact; it includes case studies pertaining to multilingual settings, for example in Africa, Australia, Melanesia, and Europe. The volume opens with a foreword by Dell H. Hymes.

This book is based on the proceedings of the Ergonomics Society's 1992 Annual Conference Birmingham, England, 7-10 April 1992. It contains papers, covering environmental studies, musculoskeletal studies, working postures and anthropometry, safety, and military ergonomics.