Language Processing (Studies in Cognition)
By Simon Garrod
* Publisher:Psychology Press
* Number Of Pages:433
* Publication Date:1999-09-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0863778364
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780863778360
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
Language has always been seen as a cornerstone of human intelligence yet psycholinguistics only became a recognized branch of psychology 35 years ago. At the outset it was mainly concerned with testing theories developed in linguistics following Chomsky's revolution, but since then it has become a discipline in its own right, forming a central component of cognitive science. This book is concerned with what happens when we process language - what mental operations occur during processing and how they are organized over time. It gives an account of these developments both as they relate to experimental studies of processing and as they relate to computational modeling of the processes. There are chapters covering core topics such as lexical processing, syntactic parsing and the comprehension of discourse, as well as special topics which have recently attracted interest, such as the role of morphology, reference and prosody in processing. Recent advances in the study of dialogue and psychological semantics are also discussed.
The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought
By Jr., Raymond W. Gibbs
* Publisher: Cambridge University Press
* Number Of Pages: 564
* Publication Date: 2008-09-22
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0521841062
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780521841061
* Binding: Hardcover
Product Description:
The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought offers the most comprehensive collection of essays in multidisciplinary metaphor scholarship that has ever been published. These essays explore the significance of metaphor in language, thought, culture, and artistic expression. There are five main themes of the book: the roots of metaphor, metaphor understanding, metaphor in language and culture, metaphor in reasoning and feeling, and metaphor in nonverbal expression. Contributors come from a variety of academic disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, literature, education, music, and law.
Interlanguage Variation in Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspective
By H.D. Adamson
* Publisher:Routledge
* Number Of Pages:209
* Publication Date:2008-12-10
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0805855769
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780805855760
Product Description:
In this book H.D. Adamson reviews scholarship in sociolinguistics and second language acquisition, comparing theories of variation in first- and second-language speech, with special attention to the psychological underpinnings of variation theory. Interlanguage is what second language learners speak. It contains syntactic, morphological and phonological patterns that are not those of either the first or the second language, and which can be analyzed using the principles and techniques of variation theory. "Interlanguage Variation in Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspective": relates the emerging field of variation in second language learners' speech (interlanguage) to the established field of variation in native speakers' speech; relates the theory of linguistic variation with psycholinguistic models of language processing; relates sociolinguistic variation theory to the theory of Cognitive Grammar; and suggests teaching applications that follow from the theoretical discussion.At the forefront of scholarship in the fields of interlanguage and variation theory scholarship, this book is directed to graduate students and researchers in applied English linguistics and second language acquisition, especially those with a background in sociolinguistics.
Converging Methods for Understanding Reading and Dyslexia (Language, Speech, and Communication)
By Raymond Klein, Patricia A. McMullen
* Publisher:The MIT Press
* Number Of Pages:536
* Publication Date:1999-11-12
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0262112477
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780262112475
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
In the information age, reading is one of the most important cognitive skills an individual acquires. A scientific understanding of this skill is important to help optimize its acquisition and performance. This book offers an interdisciplinary look at the acquisition, loss, and remediation of normal reading processes. Its two main goals are to illustrate, through state-of-the-art examples, various approaches used by scientists to understand the complex skill of reading and its breakdown, and to stimulate innovative research strategies that combine these methods. The book is divided into five sections: normal adult reading and its development, developmental dyslexia, varieties of brain-damaged reading, neuroimaging, and computational modeling.
Contributors:
Marlene Behrmann, Derek Besner, Lori Buchanan, Thomas H. Carr, John C. DeFries, Jonathan B. Demb, Martha J. Farah, Helen Forsberg, John Gabrieli, Javier Gayan, Usha Goswami, Nancy Hilderbrandt, Betty Ann Levy, Maureen W. Lovett, G. E. MacKinnon, Michael E. J. Masson, Bruce D. McCandliss, Richard K. Olson, David C. Plaut, Russell A. Poldrack, Michael L. Posner, Keith Rayner.
Recent Trends in Discourse and Dialogue (Text, Speech and Language Technology)
By Laila Dybkj忙r, Wolfgang Minker
* Publisher:Springer
* Number Of Pages:312
* Publication Date:2008-02-12
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:1402068204
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9781402068201
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This book is a collection of eleven chapters which together represent an original contribution to the field of (multimodal) spoken dialogue systems. The chapters include highly relevant topics, such as dialogue modeling in research systems versus industrial systems, evaluation, miscommunication and error handling, grounding, statistical and corpus-based approaches to discourse and dialogue modeling, data analysis, and corpus annotation and annotation tools. The book contains several detailed application studies, including, e.g., speech-controlled MP3 players in a car environment, negotiation training with a virtual human in a military context, application of spoken dialogue to question-answering systems, and cognitive aspects in tutoring systems. The chapters vary considerably with respect to the level of expertise required in advance to benefit from them. However, most chapters start with a state-of-the-art description from which all readers from the spoken dialogue community may benefit. Overview chapters and state-of-the-art descriptions may also be of interest to people from the human-computer interaction community.
Markedness And Language Change: The Romani Sample (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology)
By Viktor Elsik; Yaron Matras
* Publisher:Mouton De Gruyter
* Number Of Pages:475
* Publication Date:2006-02-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:3110184524
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9783110184525
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
'Markedness' is a central notion in linguistic theory. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive survey of markedness relations across various grammatical categories, in a sample of closely-related speech varieties. It is based on a sample of over 100 dialects of Romani, collected and processed via the Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) Database - a comparative grammatical outline in electronic form, constructed by the authors between 2000-2004. Romani dialects provide an exciting sample of language change phenomena: they are oral languages, which have been separated and dispersed from some six centuries, and are strongly shaped by the influence of diverse contact languages. The book takes a typological approach to markedness, viewing it as a hierarchy among values that is conditioned by conceptual and cognitive universals. But it introduces a functional-pragmatic notion of markedness, as a grammaticalised strategy employed in order to priositise information. In what is referred to as 'dynamic', such prioritisation is influenced by an interplay of factors: the values within a category and the conceptual notions that they represent, the grammatical structure onto which the category values are mapped, and the kind of strategy that is applied in order to prioritise certain value. Consequently, the book contains a thorough survey of some 20 categories (e.g Person, Number, Gender, and so on) and their formal representation in various grammatical structures across the sample. The various accepted criteria for markedness (e.g. Complexity, Differentiation, Erosion, and so on) are examined systematically in relation to the values of each and every category, for each relevant structure. The outcome is a novel picture of how different markedness criteria may cluster for certain categories, giving a concrete reality to the hitherto rather vague notion of markedness. Borrowing and its relation to markedness is also examined, offering new insights into the motivations behind contact-induced change.
Fragments: Studies in Ellipsis and Gapping
By Shalom Lappin, Elabbas Benmamoun
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:320
* Publication Date:1999-01-28
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0195123026
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780195123029
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This volume contains essays on ellipsis -- the omission of understood words from a sentence -- and the closely related phenomena of gapping. This volume presents work by leading researchers on syntactic, semantic and computational aspects of ellipsis. The chapters bring together a variety of theoretical perspectives and examine a range of cross-linguistic phenomena involving ellipsis in Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, and in English. This volume will be of interest to syntacticians, semanticists, computational linguists, and cognitive scientists.
Interlanguage Pragmatics
By Gabriele Kasper, Shoshana Blum-Kulka
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:264
* Publication Date:1993-08-05
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0195066022
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780195066029
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
As a field of inquiry, interlanguage pragmatics reflects the growing interest in recent years in understanding the social and pragmatic aspects of second language acquisition. Interlanguage Pragmatics offers an up-to-date synthesis of current research in the field, documenting from diverse perspectives the development, comprehension, and production of pragmatic knowledge in a second language. The book consists of three sections. The first concerns cognitive approaches to interlanguage pragmatic development; the second, interlanguage speech act realization of a variety of speech acts; and the third, discoursal perspectives on interlanguage. Each section is prefaced by an introduction by the editors which provides relevant theoretical and methodological background. The editors' general introduction offers a critical overview of the issues currently debated. This book is the first to exclusively address the pragmatic dimension in second language acquistion, presenting a state-of-the-art view of the field and outlining directions for future research.
Phonology in Context (Palgrave Advances)
By Martha C. Pennington
* Publisher:Palgrave Macmillan
* Number Of Pages:336
* Publication Date:2007-02-20
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:1403935378
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9781403935373
* Binding:Paperback
Product Description:
This book takes a fresh look at phonology in a range of real-world contexts that go beyond traditional concerns and challenge existing assumptions and practices. It brings together research and theory from first and second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, evolutionary linguistics, contact linguistics, clinical linguistics, cognitive psychology, literacy, and language teaching to suggest new directions for the field.
The Acquisition of the Lexicon
By Lila Gleitman, Barbara Landau
* Publisher:The MIT Press
* Number Of Pages:488
* Publication Date:1994-10-13
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0262571099
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780262571098
* Binding:Paperback
Product Description:
Between the ages of eighteen months and six years, children acquire about eight words each day without specific instruction or correction, simply through the course of natural conversational interactions. This book brings together investigations from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (with an emphasis on linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computer science) to examine how young children acquire the vocabulary of their native tongue with such rapidity, and with virtually no errors along the way. The chapters discuss a number of issues relating to the child's mental representation of objects and events on the one hand, and of the linguistic input on the other; and the learning procedures that can accept such data to build, store, and manipulate the vocabulary of 100,000 words or so that constitute the adult state. Taken together, these essays provide a state-of-the art analysis of one of the most remarkable cognitive achievements of the human infant.
Contributors:
- Part I. The Nature of the Mental Lexicon. Edwin Williams. Beth Levin.
- Part II. Discovering the Word Units. Anne Cutler. Michael H. Kelly and Susanne Martin.
- Part III. Categorizing the World. Susan Carey. Frank C. Keil.
- Part IV. Categories, Words, and Language. Ellen M. Markman. Sandra A. Waxman. Barbara Landau. Paul Bloom.
- Part V. The Case of Verbs. Cynthia Fischer, D. Geoffrey Hall, Susan Rakowitz, and Lila Gleitman. Steven Pinker. Jane Grimshaw.
- Part VI. Procedures for Verb Learning. Michael R. Brent. Mark Steedman.
Transcultural English Studies: Theories, Fictions, Realities. (Cross/Cultures)
By Frank Schulze-Engler, Sissy Helff
* Publisher:Rodopi
* Number Of Pages:488
* Publication Date:2009-05-05
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:9042025638
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9789042025639
Product Description:
What is most strikingly new about the transcultural is its sudden ubiquity. Following in the wake of previous concepts in cultural and literary studies such as creolization, hybridity, and syncretism, and signalling a family relationship to terms such as transnationality, translocality, and transmigration, 'transcultural' terminology has unobtrusively but powerfully edged its way into contemporary theoretical and critical discourse. The four sections of this volume denote major areas where 'transcultural' questions and problematics have come to the fore: theories of culture and literature that have sought to account for the complexity of culture in a world increasingly characterized by globalization, transnationalization, and interdependence; realities of individual and collective life-worlds shaped by the ubiquity of phenomena and experiences relating to transnational connections and the blurring of cultural boundaries; fictions in literature and other media that explore these realities, negotiate the fuzzy edges of 'ethnic' or 'national' cultures, and participate in the creation of transnational public spheres as well as transcultural imaginations and memories; and, finally, pedagogy and didactics, where earlier models of teaching 'other' cultures are faced with the challenge of coming to terms with cultural complexity both in what is being taught and in the people it is taught to, and where 'target cultures' have become elusive. The idea of 'locating' culture and literature exclusively in the context of ethnicities or nations is rapidly losing plausibility throughout an 'English-speaking world' that has long since been multi- rather than monolingual. Exploring the prospects and contours of 'Transcultural English Studies' thus reflects a set of common challenges and predicaments that in recent years have increasingly moved centre stage not only in the New Literatures in English, but also in British and American studies.
Handbook of Research on Web 2.0 and Second Language Learning (Handbook of Research On...)
By Michael Thomas
* Publisher:Information Science Reference
* Number Of Pages:636
* Publication Date:2008-11-26
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:1605661902
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9781605661902
Product Description:
Over the last few years, second generation Internet-based services, or Web 2.0 technologies, have emerged as the new buzzwords in information communication technologies.
The Handbook of Research on Web 2.0 and Second Language Learning investigates how those involved in education teachers, students, and administrators can respond to the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 technology, within existing institutional and pedagogical frameworks. Containing chapters by experts from across the globe, this defining body of research is the first of its kind to focus on second language learning in relation to the history of computer assisted language learning.
How to Teach Vocabulary
By Scott Thornbury
* Publisher:Pearson ESL
* Number Of Pages:185
* Publication Date:2002-03-26
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0582429668
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780582429666
Product Description:
*Looks in detail at the theory of words and at how students learn new vocabulary *Offers practical advice on how to help students build vocabulary in new and effective ways and how to test students' word knowledge *Major developments, such as language corpora and lexical approaches, are clearly explained and related to your needs as a teacher
Summary: Yet Again, "How To" Hits the Mark
Rating: 5
Thornbury has proven to be a very good author in the past, and this only served to up the expectations for "How To Teach Vocabulary". Simply put, for an area that I find personally difficult to deal with, this book proved to be a God-send. It combines a good deal of the theory with very practical ideas for utilisation in class.
The book provides a consistent grounding in the jargon used for the area, and gives you a good grounding in how information of this type is organised within people's memory. This view of the workings of memory, whether short-term, working or long term, underpins much of what Thornbury goes on to suggest for the class.
The book covers a large range of topics, all arranged in chapters, including testing, presenting, getting students to work with new lexis, using texts, dictionaries and copora, and a whole range more. Of particular value in my opinion is the chapter on training students to become good vocabulary learners. Training students to learn for themselves outside the class is of ongoing importance, even long after they have left our lessons long behind them.
Throughout the book are example activities, some of which teachers will be familiar with, and others new. These give the reader a good starting point on how to implement some of these ideas and promote a high level of retention among students. It was these that I found very useful, as well.
To put it simply, this book is a goldmine of information and ideas, with a large array of exercises and activities that one can immediately use, later adapting as needed. This is a great book, and I thoroughly recommend it to all.
Summary: Definitely worth searching for a used copy!
Rating: 5
This book is excellent! A resource for teachers who, like myself, teach quite a lot of vocabulary. The book echoes my own belief on the importance of teaching vocabulary by quoting the linguist, David Wilkins: "Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed."
It's apparently out of print and that's a shame because it's the best resource I've found for teaching vocabulary.
I ordered a used copy and although the used book ordering process and the delay in receiving the book was annoying, the book itself was, as advertised, in excellent condition.
To make full use of this book and of the lexical approach to teaching one must have a thorough understanding of vocabulary formation and how learners assimilate vocabulary.
The book contains quite a bit of technical information that might overwhelm but it also contains a sizeable amount of basic information helpful to any teacher teaching vocabulary.
Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction
By Stefan Th. Gries
* Publisher:Routledge
* Number Of Pages:248
* Publication Date:2009-02-20
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0415962714
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780415962711
Product Description:
The first textbook of its kind, Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R demonstrates how to use the open source programming language R for corpus linguistic analyses. Computational and corpus linguists doing corpus work will find that R provides an enormous range of functions that currently require several programs to achieve – searching and processing corpora, arranging and outputting the results of corpus searches, statistical evaluation, and graphing.
Summary: Considerate Corpus Linguistics and R Introduction
Rating: 4
This book was not just written, it was designed--and well designed to teach readers about both corpus linguistics and the R statistics package. This electronic version allows busy readers with Kindles or iPhones to study productively during long commutes, even longer delays at the doctor's office, and endless unpunctuated speeches by boorish colleagues in staff meeting.
The six chapters of Stephan Th. Gries' book unfold in an instructionally sound sequence. Chapter 1 briefly introduces corpus linguistics and directs readers elsewhere for a thorough treatment of its history and theories. The second chapter defines word frequency lists, word collocations, and concordances--three basic analysis tools of the discipline. Chapter 3 shifts focus and introduces the R software. This is an excellent and thorough coverage of R data manipulation, programming, and the text processing needed to analyze linguistic corpora.
Building on this foundation, the book integrates R with linguistic analysis. Chapter 4 revisits word lists, collocations and concordances, teaching readers to implement these methods in R. Chapter 5 reviews the basics of statistical reasoning and introduces additional analysis techniques in R. Chapter 6 presents case studies and points readers to the book's supporting web site for associated data files and R syntax files.
The book is considerate of the reader. It uses only freely-available, open source software such as R, the Tinn-R text editor, and OpenOffice Calc. Beyond the price of the book and access to a computer, the author intends no financial barriers to learning. The micro-design of the chapters is also reader-friendly. R code and output are clearly marked and helpfully annotated. Frequent "Think Breaks" in the chapters challenge readers to solve a small problem before reading the answer. This technique encourages active reading and produces a feeling of satisfaction as one progresses through each section. Chapters end with "For further study/exploration" sections that contain pointers to R documentation, web resources, and further reading.
I recommend this book as a self-contained source about statistical methods in corpus linguistics as implemented in R. I would supplement it with Svenja Adolphs' Introducing Electronic Text Analysis to learn how the results of statistical analysis are used in applied linguistics and related disciplines.
Summary: Very Useful book
Rating: 5
If you already work with Corpus Linguistics or plan on doing so, this is a book you MUST have, read thoroughly and ensure its application. The use of R as a tool to both manipulate and analyze corpus data is surely an important step towards a more systematic and more quantitatively-oriented CL. Sure enough, this book is the biggest contribution towards this end thus far!
Discourse as Structure and Process (Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introductio) (v. 1)
By Dr. Teun A. van Dijk
* Publisher:Sage Publications Ltd
* Number Of Pages:368
* Publication Date:1997-05-06
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0803978448
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780803978447
Product Description:
What is discourse and how has the new interdisciplinary field of discourse studies developed? What are the linguistic and other structures of discourse at various levels of analysis? How do people - and their minds - go about producing and remembering text or talk? How are these mental processes interactionally shaped? Covering a great variety of genres, both written and spoken, Discourse as Structure and Process explains how discourse is organized, how discursive form and meaning are related and what the functions are of style and rhetoric in the communicative context.
Summary: An excellent introduction to the field
Rating: 5
This first volume, along with Volume 2: Discourse as Social Interaction, provides an excellent introduction to the field that includes the most contemporary perspectives. Topics covered in Voume 1 include semantics, stylistics, narrative, argumentation, and cognition (including social cognition).
One strength of the approach is the emphasis on critical and explanatory discourse analysis, including the analysis of ideology, rather than simply descriptive commentary on discourse. Another strength is the extensive list of references for each chapter - something that will be very useful when making detailed forays into different research areas.
Beginning researchers will find this strong collection fascinating and will certainly want to read more in the field. More experienced researchers will probably appreciate the clarity and critical edge of the essays. Highly recommended.
Summary: hi, is this page about the book 'discourse analysis'?
Rating: 5
hi' i'm luckshee from the universioty of mauritius. i'm actually doing a degree in french. i would like to have some notes about that book. i have to prepare a dissertation on a novel:'les liaisons dangereuse' related to discourse analysis. would you please help me? luckshee.
Breakthrough Rapid Reading
By Peter Kump
* Publisher:Prentice Hall Press
* Number Of Pages:276
* Publication Date:1998-11-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:073520019X
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780735200197
Product Description:
A previous National Director of Education for Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics presents his do-it-yourself program for increasing reading speed and boosting comprehension.
"Speed reading is one of the truly useful educational ideas of the last few years, and this book can be the least expensive and most efficient way you can learn it." --William Proxmire, United States Senator
The perfect answer to today's information explosion, Peter Kump's rapid reading method has already helped thousands of people to read up to eight times faster, with better concentration and retention.
This program brings together the best of what classroom speed reading courses have to offer, and distills fundamental principles and skills that can be learned at home with the help of the drills and exercises provided. And because it lets readers choose their own material and set their own pace, it's the ideal method for busy people juggling a full schedule.
Breakthrough Rapid Reading makes conquering information overload a reality. So whether it's cutting down on that backlog of business reports and technical matter or scaling that mountain of newspapers and leisure reading, getting up to speed is only a matter of time and practice.
Summary: Very Helpful
Rating: 5
I am a teacher as well as a student who is completing my degree work. Both of these roles require a great deal of reading. Using the techniques from this book has helped me to increase my reading speed by at least 30% and I'm only on the 3rd chapter.
Summary: Fantastic - It really does work - you get out what you put in
Rating: 5
From 200 to over 1300 words per minute with retention - it's pretty impressive.
The good thing is that the techniques in the book really do produce results above and beyond what you ever expected...the bad news is that it does not happen over-night, it takes good bit of dedication and consistency. You have to really want it to complete this course of 36 chapters.
The fact that it does NOT happen over-night is something that you should be really happy about - because it's like body building - only it's mind building !
For those willing to put in the work, the rewards will be great and you will not regret it....and you can keep your newly developed skill for the rest of your life !
Throughout the course I reached practise rates in the mid to late 2000s with a final rate of 1900 wpm.
The best part is finishing a book in one day - it's something I've always wanted to be able to do - and now it's a reality.
I cannot recommend this book enough....and on so many different levels.
Buy it !
Remember one thing though - with any rapid reading the faster you go the resolution of the material does drop - like going from colour to black and white - but the important details are still there.
The course teaches you many different gears to be applied to reading for different rates from meadium, to fast, to really fast so you can pickup and go and adjust as required - along with a lot of different exercises on recall to improve comprehension as well as study oriented reading exercises to increase retention, recall and comprehension.
It really does have it all.
Summary: Not Much Use Without the Forms
Rating: 2
I liked the reviews on this book and was happy to see there was a Kindle version. One problem, though. There are multiple forms in the back of the book used for the exercises. I searched all over the 'Net and could not find an online version of them. Now I have to either buy the print book or create the complicated forms myself. Too bad there isn't some standard that Kindle books must be as functional as the print version in order to be accepted.
Summary: Save alot of money with this book
Rating: 5
Anyone looking to learn about speed reading has heard of the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics course. The Auther of this book was the Director of Education for Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics. You can buy the Video tapes or cd for around $200. I do have the VHS version I had bought 5 years back. This book has all of the same information and is broken down into smaller sections. Having this in book form,I find that it is easier and more convenient. The book is written well, and easy to read and understand.
Summary: REQUIRED READING FOR ALL: The Best Way to Read More and Retain More Per Second
Rating: 5
"Speed reading is one of the truly useful educational ideas of the last few years, and this book can be the least expensive and most efficient way you can learn it."
-William Proxmire, United States Senator
This is REQUIRED reading for everyone. There is absolutely no reason why the average college student should read at a pathetic 300 wpm. We should all be reading at 1500 wpm at the least, with high comprehension as well.
Today's informational age demands that we process more information than ever before. Peter Kump's rapid reading method has been proven to help thousands read anywhere from two to eight times faster. This ability to read, understand, and retain more per second is vital for a competitive edge.
This is best system I found to learn speed reading. I integrate his methods with mnemonics, peak performance, and hypnosis to get even greater results.
Linguistics: An Introduction
By Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, David Britain, Harald Clahsen, Andrew Spencer
* Publisher:Cambridge University Press
* Number Of Pages:450
* Publication Date:2009-02-23
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0521849489
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780521849487
Product Description:
Written by a team based at one of the world's leading centres for linguistic teaching and research, the second edition of this highly successful textbook offers a unified approach to language, viewed from a range of perspectives essential for students' understanding of the subject. Using clear explanations throughout, the book is divided into three main sections: sounds, words, and sentences. In each, the foundational concepts are introduced, along with their application to the fields of child language acquisition, psycholinguistics, language disorders, and sociolinguistics, giving the book a unique yet simple structure that helps students to engage with the subject more easily than other textbooks on the market. This edition includes a completely new section on sentence use, including an introduction and discussion of core areas of pragmatics and conversational analysis; new coverage of sociolinguistic topics, introducing communities of practice; a wealth of new exercise material and updated further reading.
Summary: difficult introduction, expensive
Rating: 2
The writing style in this textbook is sometimes just too intellectual for its own good. By the way, it has a really backwards explanation on page 131 paragraph 3: "...we have appealed to three types of criteria..." (here the 3 criteria are finally revealed!! after you have waded though several paragraphs with no way of knowing what the material was getting at in the first place!)
The book gives a small treatment of pragmatics at the end, and overall, the material throughout the book, in my opinion, is not always at an introductory level. Though it is a hardbound book and does use high quality paper, one-hundred dollars for this textbook is too much, it doesn't even have a glossary!
Summary: Written by and for True Believers
Rating: 2
I own a dozen introductory linguistics textbooks, and this is my least favorite. Physically, the book is short and thick, with narrow margins, which makes it hard to read without breaking the spine. There are few exercises, and almost none include data from languages other than English. The bibliography slightly exceeds four pages. It is the only introductory textbook I have ever seen without a glossary.
The title is misleading. This book is really an introduction to Chomskyan generative grammar, not an introduction to linguistics. Students who read this book will be plunged into the world of empty categories, covert movement, Merge, and the Economy Principle; on the other hand, they will never encounter the terms spectrogram, ergative, pragmatics, or Indo-European. If that sounds like your idea of what an introduction to linguistics should be, then I suppose this is the book for you.
Summary: Response to watzizname's review
Rating: 4
The review posted by watzizname slams this book on a few fronts, but the slams are unfounded. Watzizname may be a casual observer of linguistics, but he doesn't seem to know what is going on in the field presently.
For example, when referring to case, watzizname says that English no longer uses case, but is a positional language. This is true to some extent, but most contemporary theories of syntax use case as a crucial component, even when the case is not overtly marked (as in English). The Principles and Parameters model of syntax contains the "case filter," where all overt DPs (or Noun Phrases) must be case-marked at Surface Structure, else the sentence is ruled ungrammatical. In the more modern Minimalist Program, uninterpretable case must be "checked." These apply to even non-case languages like English, since they refer to abstract case, not morhpological or "inherent" case. Pronoun case markings are simply the most concrete way of explaining case in English, since we have few morphological reflexes left.
The other gripe of watzizname's was that Noun Prases are referred to as Determiner Phrases in the book. Watzizname clearly doesn't know where the theory is nowadays. Noun Phrases are now thought to be embedded withing DPs, with the determiner serving as sort of a 'fuctional shell,' even when there is no overt determiner in the phrase. These function just like the 'light verb' "v" serves as a functional shell for verb phrases and TP/IP/AgrP/CP serve as functional shells for clauses (preveiously termed "S").
So, please ignore watzizname's complaints about this book. What he is complaining about actually reflects some of the more recent developments in the fields of syntax and linguistics and should actually be considered PLUSSES for this book, not detractors. Most intro to linguistics textbooks show you where the field was 20 years ago.
Summary: A Decent Survey
Rating: 4
I found this book to be a decent survey of Linguistics. It is written at a higher level, assuming the reader already knows a bit about language, which I appreciated, yet is not so complex you cannot follow it. Obviously a graduate level read. I recommend it for anyone who is brushing up on linguistics and already has a background in it. It is an overview with more depth than typical linguistics books.
Summary: A Decent Survey
Rating: 4
I found this book to be a decent survey of Linguistics. It is written at a higher level, assuming the reader already knows a bit about language, which I appreciated, yet is not so complex you cannot follow it. Obviously a graduate level read. I recommend it for anyone who is brushing up on linguistics and already has a background in it. It is an overview with more depth than typical linguistics books.
The Framework of Language (Michigan Studies in the Humanities)
By Roman Jakobson
* Publisher:Univ of Michigan/Michigan Slavic
* Number Of Pages:132
* Publication Date:1980-06
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0936534001
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780936534008
Time, Will and Mental Process (Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics)
By Jason W. Brown
* Publisher:Springer
* Number Of Pages:276
* Publication Date:1996-02-29
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0306452316
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780306452314
Product Description:
In this volume, distinguished neurologist Jason W. Brown extends the microgenetic theory of the mind by offering a new approach to the problem of time and free will. Brown bases his work on a unitary process model of brain and behavior. He examines the problem of subjective time and free will, the experiential present, the nature of intentionality, and the creative properties of physical growth and mental process.
A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries: Volume III: 1859-1936
By Julie Coleman
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:352
* Publication Date:2008-12-15
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199549370
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199549375
Product Description:
This book continues Julie Coleman's acclaimed history of dictionaries of English slang and cant. It describes the increasingly systematic and scholarly way in which such terms were recorded and classified in the UK, the USA, Australia, and elsewhere, and the huge growth in the publication of and public appetite for dictionaries, glossaries, and guides to the distinctive vocabularies of different social groups, classes, districts, regions, and nations. Dr Coleman describes the origins of words and phrases and explores their history. By copious example she shows how they cast light on everyday life across the globe - from settlers in Canada and Australia and cockneys in London to gang-members in New York and soldiers fighting in the Boer and First World Wars - as well as on the operations of the narcotics trade and the entertainment business and the lives of those attending American colleges and British public schools.
The slang lexicographers were a colourful bunch. Those featured in this book include spiritualists, aristocrats, socialists, journalists, psychiatrists, school-boys, criminals, hoboes, police officers, and a serial bigamist. One provided the inspiration for Robert Lewis Stevenson's Long John Silver. Another was allegedly killed by a pork pie.
Julie Coleman's account will interest historians of language, crime, poverty, sexuality, and the criminal underworld.