Biodata Antonio José Silvestre

Toni Silvestre López is a lecturer in the Departament d’Estudis Anglesos at Universitat Jaume I in Castellón. At the moment he holds an FPU MEC scholarship. In December 2005 he received his MA in Applied Linguistics with a research project entitled A Cognitive Analysis of the Semantic Contribution of In, On, and At to English Prepositional Verbs. Part of this research is expanded to the context of phrasal verbs in his Ph.D. dissertation (The Semantics of In and On in VPCs: a Cognitive Linguistics Corpus-based Analysis), to be presented next January 2008, whose results are to be applied to the teaching of VPCs in EFL contexts thanks to a post-doctoral scholarship granted by the Universitat Jaume I.

Currently he is also researching on computer-assisted autonomous language learning as a member of the GIAPEL group, more particularly regarding the role of ICMs in the representation of websites, in order to ascertain to what extent they may influence the process of writing-reading.

As a member of the Lexicom project, he is providing a modest contribution to the development of the LCM model under the direction of Prof. Ricardo Mairal and Prof. Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza in terms of a series of lexical templates related to perception verbs in English. Even though the model is not directly embraced in his Ph.D. dissertation, some of its results hint that the LCM may provide an excellent framework for special VPC cases. Therefore, in a near future he intends to develop further lexical and constructional templates (mainly related to the caused-motion construction) in the use of VPCs in English.

Some of his publications are the following:

Silvestre, A.J. (2006a). ‘An Approach to the Semantics of In and On in Verb-Preposition Combinations: An Analysis of Five Sample Constructions’. In: A. Alcaraz, C. Soto, & M. Zunino (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th AEDEAN International Conference. Jaén: Universidad de Jaén, 333-338. ISBN: 84-8439-332-1.
(2006b). ‘John Kerry’s Political Rhetoric: An Account of the Main Rhetorical Features of his Oral Delivery’. In: Fòrum de Recerca 10. X Jornades de Foment de la Investigació. Castelló: Universitat Jaume I. ISSN: 1139-5486. http://www.uji.es/bin/publ/edicions/jfi10/fang/2.pdf
(in press a). ‘Metonymy and Anaphoric Reference in Dude, Where’s My Country, Stupid White Men, The Da Vinci Code and Deception Point’. In: I. Navarro, J.L. Otal & A.J. Silvestre (Guest Eds.), Culture, Language, and Representation 5, Special Issue Metaphor and Discourse. Castelló: UJI Press.
(in press b). ‘Topology, force-dynamics, and function in the semantics of In and On as the prepositional component of English prepositional verbs’. In: J. Valenzuela, A. Rojo, & C. Soriano (Eds.), Trends in Cognitive Linguistics: theoretical and applied models (provisional title).
Navarro, I., Otal, J.L. & Silvestre, A.J. (guest editors.) (in press). Culture, Language, and Representation 5, Special Issue Metaphor and Discourse. Castelló: UJI Press.
Navarro, I. & Silvestre, A.J. (in press). ‘The Role of ICMs in Cybergenre Representation and Reading Modes.’ In: M. Navarro & I. Brady (Eds.), Proceedings of the II International Conference on Human and Material Resources in Foreign Language Learning. Murcia: UCAM Press.
Silvestre, A. J. & Navarro, I. (2007a). ‘A cognitive approach to the semantic contribution of In and On to English prepositional verbs’. Paper presented at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Joensuu, Aug 29th-Sept 1st 2007.
(2007b). ‘Diachronic change in the semantic configuration of six verb-preposition combinations’. In: Philologia vol. 6, series Studia Universitatis “Petru Maior”, 156-171. Targu Mures: Editura Universitatii “Petru Maior”. ISSN 1582-9960.
(in press). ‘Prepositions and adverbs in English VPCs. The case of In and On: corpus-based usage patterns and pedagogical implications’. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Corpus-Based Approaches to ELT. (Provisional Title). Castelló: UJI Press.