Brian Nolan

This book provides an account of the speech acts of modern Irish (assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, declarative, and indirect speech acts), and their various significant clausal / sentential constructions. The study is strongly descriptive in the first instance while delivering an analysis of these diverse speech acts of Irish in a way that is intended to strike a balance between depiction, explanation, and technical characterisation. The choice of topics, the characterisation of speech and illocutionary acts, covered in this study is guided primarily by speech act theory. It relates the speech acts of Irish to each other, and looks to define each, in terms of their relationship to the situation of the utterance reflecting real-time language-in-use, with context and common ground, to identify their important properties. This book is intended for a broad and diverse scholarly audience. Primarily, it is intended to be of value to linguists interested in the pragmatics of Irish. Linguists studying the interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics are likely to find many of the descriptions and analyses of the speech act language phenomena interesting and useful.

This book provides an account of the speech acts of modern Irish (assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, declarative, and indirect speech acts), and their various significant clausal / sentential constructions. The study is strongly descriptive in the first instance while delivering an analysis of these diverse speech acts of Irish in a way that is intended to strike a balance between depiction, explanation, and technical characterisation. The choice of topics, the characterisation of speech and illocutionary acts, covered in this study is guided primarily by speech act theory. It relates the speech acts of Irish to each other, and looks to define each, in terms of their relationship to the situation of the utterance reflecting real-time language-in-use, with context and common ground, to identify their important properties. This book is intended for a broad and diverse scholarly audience. Primarily, it is intended to be of value to linguists interested in the pragmatics of Irish. Linguists studying the interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics are likely to find many of the descriptions and analyses of the speech act language phenomena interesting and useful.

This book provides an account of the speech acts of modern Irish (assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, declarative, and indirect speech acts), and their various significant clausal / sentential constructions. The study is strongly descriptive in the first instance while delivering an analysis of these diverse speech acts of Irish in a way that is intended to strike a balance between depiction, explanation, and technical characterisation. The choice of topics, the characterisation of speech and illocutionary acts, covered in this study is guided primarily by speech act theory. It relates the speech acts of Irish to each other, and looks to define each, in terms of their relationship to the situation of the utterance reflecting real-time language-in-use, with context and common ground, to identify their important properties. This book is intended for a broad and diverse scholarly audience. Primarily, it is intended to be of value to linguists interested in the pragmatics of Irish. Linguists studying the interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics are likely to find many of the descriptions and analyses of the speech act language phenomena interesting and useful.

This volume investigates the nature of language, culture, knowledge, and context, and their interrelationships. Each of these is defined - in terms of their relationship to language in particular, and to identify their respective properties. What exactly is meant by the term knowledge and what are the different kinds of knowledge? How might this be shared in a dialogue between two interlocutors, within a shared common ground, in the realisation of successful speech acts? Cultural and other knowledge is also found within the linguistic landscape and the artefacts within our environment. The book explores the ways that language is central to expressions of knowledge and culture. The purpose of the book is therefore to draw a comprehensive and representative picture of the dimensions of meaning, emerging from the interrelationship between these domains of language, culture, knowledge, and context.

This volume investigates the nature of language, culture, knowledge, and context, and their interrelationships. Each of these is defined - in terms of their relationship to language in particular, and to identify their respective properties. What exactly is meant by the term knowledge and what are the different kinds of knowledge? How might this be shared in a dialogue between two interlocutors, within a shared common ground, in the realisation of successful speech acts? Cultural and other knowledge is also found within the linguistic landscape and the artefacts within our environment. The book explores the ways that language is central to expressions of knowledge and culture. The purpose of the book is therefore to draw a comprehensive and representative picture of the dimensions of meaning, emerging from the interrelationship between these domains of language, culture, knowledge, and context.

Modern Irish is a VSO language, in common with the other Celtic languages, and the order of elements in the structure of transitive sentences is verb-subject-object. This book provides a characterisation of the nominal, verb, clause and information structure of the Irish language from a functional perspective based on Role and Reference Grammar. We include in this analysis the layered structure of the noun phrase of Irish and the various NP operators, the layered structure of the clause and the verbal system at the syntax-semantic interface along with a number of verb valence behaviours as mediated by event and argument structure. Additionally, we survey previous treatments of Irish within a functionalist approach. The verbal noun has a special place within the Irish language and its deployment is particularly productive. We examine the derivation of the verbal noun and the contexts in which it is used. We also provide an account of light verbs and complex predicates as they occur within Irish and link this to a characterisation of the information structure of Irish. We will, in addition, provide an analysis of certain linguistically interesting phenomena that are particular to Irish (and the other Celtic languages) including the two verbs of 'to be'. Within the verbal system our concern is with the relationship between the semantic representation of a verbal predicate in the context of a clause and its syntactic expression through the argument structure of the verb. We will suggest that lexical specification is via a logical representation that reflects the aspectual decomposition of the verbal predicate and that this determines, with an actor-undergoer hierarchy, the operation of the mapping into syntax via the linking system. This book will be of interest to all linguists operating within the broad functional paradigm, along with scholars, researchers and postgraduate students interested in Irish, in particular, and the Celtic languages in general.

Research on poverty in rich countries relies primarily on household income to capture living standards and distinguish those in poverty, and this is also true of official poverty measurement and monitoring. However, awareness of the limitations of income has been heightening interest in the role that non-monetary measures of deprivation can play. This book takes as its starting-point that research on poverty and social exclusion has been undergoing a fundamental shift towards a multidimensional approach; that researchers and policy-makers alike have struggled to develop concepts and indicators that do this approach justice; and that this is highly salient not only within individual countries (including both Britain and the USA) but also for the European Union post-enlargement. The difficulties encountered in applying a multidimensional approach reflect limitations in the information available but also in the conceptual and empirical underpinnings provided by existing research. The central aim of this book is to contribute to the development of those underpinnings and to productive ways of employing non-monetary indicators of deprivation. It will appeal to readers from diverse disciplinary perspectives, especially those concerned with substantive issues and policy implications. In addressing this audience it also provides a non-technical account of recent developments in the rapidly expanding academic literature, serving as a guide to those who wish to explore it in greater depth. The book maps out the current landscape and the best way forward, concluding by offering a critical evaluation of the EU's 2020 poverty reduction target.

Social cohesion is one of the declared objectives of the European Union and, with some 16% of EU citizens at risk of poverty, the need to fight poverty and social exclusion continues as a major challenge. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the EU Social Inclusion Process, the means by which it hopes to meet this objective, and explores the challenges ahead at local, regional, national and EU levels. It sets out concrete proposals for taking the Process forward. The book provides a unique analysis of policy formulation and assessment. Setting out the evolution and current state of EU cooperation in social policy, it examines what can be learned about poverty and social exclusion from the EU commonly agreed indicators. Taking the position of outside, but informed, observers, the authors explore the further development of the common indicators, including the implications of Enlargement, and consider the challenges of advancing the Social Inclusion Process - strengthening policy analysis, embedding the Process in domestic policies and making it more effective. Proposing the setting of targets and restructuring of National Action Plans and their implementation, they emphasise the need for widespread "ownership" of the Process at domestic and EU level and for it to demonstrate significant progress in reducing poverty and social exclusion. The book will be invaluable to academics, students and policy-makers at sub-national, national and EU levels as well as to social partners, and NGOs working towards a more inclusive society.

This text aims to make a scientific contribution to the development of social indicators for the purposes of European policy-making. It considers the principles underlying the construction of policy-relevant indicators, the definition of indicators, and the practical issues that can arise.

This text aims to make a scientific contribution to the development of social indicators for the purposes of European policy-making. It considers the principles underlying the construction of policy-relevant indicators, the definition of indicators, and the practical issues that can arise.

Poverty alleviation is a central aim of economic and social policy, and yet there is no consensus about what poverty means or how it is best measured. Often, the households below an income poverty line are counted as poor, but there may be no firm basis for concentrating on that particular income level. There may also be wide variations among the households below any income poverty line in terms of their actual living standards. This book explores what poverty means in developed countries, and shows that understanding and measuring it requires widening the focus beyond curent income. By using broader measures of resources and information on living patterns and concrete indicators of deprivation, it shows how those who are effectively excluded from participation in society due to a lack of resources can be more accurately identified, and the processes producing such exclusion better understood. The core issue of this book is how to define and measure poverty in relatively rich countries in a way which is valid, meaningful in the context, and valuable for policy-making. Extensive tables of data from a specially designed survey of a large representative sample of Irish households are used to illustrate this issue.