Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought
By Noam Chomsky
* Publisher:Cybereditions
* Number Of Pages:152
* Publication Date:2003-03
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:187727545X
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9781877275456
Product Description:
In this extraordinarily original and profound work, Noam Chomsky discusses themes in the study of language and mind since the end of the sixteenth century in order to explain the motivations and methods that underlie his work in linguistics, the science of mind, and even politics. This edition includes a new and specially written introduction by James McGilvray, contextualising the work for the twenty-first century. It has been made more accessible to a larger audience; all the French and German in the original edition has been translated, and the notes and bibliography have been brought up to date. The relationship between the original edition (published in 1966) and contemporary biolinguistic work is also explained. This challenging volume is an important contribution to the study of language and mind, and to the history of these studies since the end of the sixteenth century.
Summary: Chomsky rules! (sorry Noam)
Rating: 4
what can I say?
to know his work is to love him.
read everything the man has written.
Summary: Language and mind
Rating: 4
"Descartes was able to convince himself that all aspects of animal behaviour can be explained on the assumption that an animal is an automaton" (p. 3), but he did not believe that the creative aspect of language use could be so explained. While a machine can mimic some superficial aspects of language, it can not be made to "'reply appropriately to everything that may be said in its presence, as even the lowest type of man can do'" (p. 4). Humboldt went further and argued that this creative aspect of language use, the ability to "'make infinite use of finite means,'" is made possible only "'through the identity of the thought-producing and the language-producing power'" (p. 20).
This human linguistic capacity must be innate, since "'all children learn to speak and understand at approximately the same age, in spite of the most diverse of circumstances'" (Humboldt, p. 64), "'without even excepting idiots,'" while "'on the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which can do the same'" (Descartes, p. 4). Further proof that ideas are innate in the mind follows from Descartes' conviction that "'nothing reaches our mind from external objects through the organs of sense beyond certain corporeal movements,'" since this allows him to issue a challenge to his opponents "'to instruct me as to what corporeal movement it is which can form in our mind any common notion, e.g., the notion that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another'" (p. 67).
All of this suggests that the study of linguistics should focus on deep structure as opposed to surface structure. "The deep structure that expresses the meaning is common to all languages, so it is claimed, being a simple reflection of the forms of thought, the transformational rules that convert deep to surface structure differ from language to language" (p. 35). Unfortunately such studies had little to show for themselves during the period in question save for some mildly suggestive examples, e.g., of how a simple subject-attribute sentence such as "Dieu invisible a créé le monde visible" in fact contains three propositions (pp. 33-34), or how "what is affirmative or negative 'in appearance' may or may not be in meaning, that is, in deep structure" (p. 44), etc. Relatedly, the "Cartesian" point of view also suggests that the study of linguistics should focus on explanation rather than description. For example, a descriptive grammar (of French, which is what these people were studying) may state the rule that a relative clause may not be added to a noun that has no article or only the indefinite article de, e.g. one cannot say "il a esté blessé d'un coup de fleche, qui estoit empoisonnée" (p. 56; sic, with old conjugations of être). The Port-Royal Grammar offered a more explanatory approach which reformulated the rule in terms of whether the noun in question is "determined," whether by article or otherwise, which captures the underlying reason for the rule and simultaneously explains numerous counterexamples to the rule. But ultimately these attempts at explanatory linguistics brought few insights.
The Generative Lexicon (Language, Speech, and Communication)
By James Pustejovsky
* Publisher:The MIT Press
* Number Of Pages:312
* Publication Date:1995-10-23
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0262161583
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780262161589
Product Description:
The Generative Lexicon presents a novel and exciting theory of lexical semantics that addresses the problem of the "multiplicity of word meaning"; that is, how we are able to give an infinite number of senses to words with finite means. The first formally elaborated theory of a generative approach to word meaning, it lays the foundation for an implemented computational treatment of word meaning that connects explicitly to a compositional semantics. In contrast to the static view of word meaning (where each word is characterized by a predetermined number of word senses) that imposes a tremendous bottleneck on the performance capability of any natural language processing system, Pustejovsky proposes that the lexicon becomes an active -- and central -- component in the linguistic description. The essence of his theory is that the lexicon functions generatively, first by providing a rich and expressive vocabulary for characterizing lexical information; then, by developing a framework for manipulating fine-grained distinctions in word descriptions; and finally, by formalizing a set of mechanisms for specialized composition of aspects of such descriptions of words, as they occur in context, extended and novel senses are generated. The subjects covered include semantics of nominals (figure/ground nominals, relational nominals, and other event nominals); the semantics of causation (in particular, how causation is lexicalized in language, including causative/unaccusatives, aspectual predicates, experiencer predicates, and modal causatives); how semantic types constrain syntactic expression (such as the behavior of type shifting and type coercion operations); a formal treatment of event semantics with subevents); and a general treatment of the problem of polysemy. Language, Speech, and Communication series
Topic and Focus: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Meaning and Intonation (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy)
By Chungmin Lee, Matthew Gordon, Daniel Büring
* Publisher:Springer
* Number Of Pages:294
* Publication Date:2007-01-16
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:1402047959
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9781402047954
Product Description:
This book contains a collection of papers exploring the cross-linguistic expression of topic and focus. A diverse set of perspectives from some of the leading scholars in the areas of semantics and intonation are represented in the collection, which is based on papers presented at the Topic and Focus Workshop at the 2001 LSA Summer Institute in Santa Barbara. This book is unique in the breadth of its typological coverage of topic and focus phenomena. Material is presented from nine languages, including several that are severely under-documented from a theoretical perspective. The expression of topic and focus are integral aspects of linguistic communication that introduce the content of discourse and emphasize its most crucial elements. Topic and focus phenomena are complex and involve both a meaning and a prosodic component. This book is the first collection of papers devoted to the rigorous examination of both semantic and intonational features of topic and focus from a broad typological perspective.
Introducing English Linguistics (Cambridge Introductions to Language and Linguistics)
By Charles F. Meyer
* Publisher:Cambridge University Press
* Number Of Pages:270
* Publication Date:2009-06-22
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0521833507
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780521833509
Product Description:
Are you looking for a genuine introduction to the linguistics of English that provides a broad overview of the subject that sustains students' interest and avoids excessive detail? Introducing English Linguistics accomplishes this goal in two ways. First, it takes a top-down approach to language, beginning with the largest unit of linguistic structure, the text, and working its way down through successively smaller structures (sentences, words, and finally speech sounds). The advantage of presenting language this way is that students are first given the larger picture - they study language in context - and then see how the smaller pieces of language are a consequence of the larger goals of linguistic communication. Second, the book does not contain invented examples, as is the case with most comparable texts, but instead takes its sample materials from the major computerised databases of spoken and written English, giving students a more realistic view of language.
Second Language Teacher Education: A Sociocultural Perspective (Esl & Applied Linguistics Professional)
By Karen E Johnson
* Publisher:Routledge
* Number Of Pages:160
* Publication Date:2009-05-21
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:041580079X
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780415800792
Product Description:
This book presents a comprehensive overview of the epistemological underpinnings of a sociocultural perspective on human learning and addresses in detail what this perspective has to offer the field of second language teacher education.
Dialects (Language Workbooks)
By Peter Trudgill
* Publisher:Routledge
* Number Of Pages:88
* Publication Date:2004-09-27
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0415342627
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780415342629
Product Description:
Routledge Language Workbooks provide absolute beginners with practical introductions to core areas of language study. Books in the series provide comprehensive coverage of the area as well as a basis for further investigation. Each Language Workbook guides the reader through the subject using 'hands-on' language analysis, equipping them with the basic analytical skills needed to handle a wide range of data. Written in a clear and simple style, with all technical concepts fully explained, Language Workbooks can be used for independent study or as part of a taught class.
Dialects:
* introduces the many dialects of English spoken in the United Kingdom
* reveals the key issues that dialectology engages with
* uses both the international phonetic alphabet and simple representations of sounds to explain pronunciations
* involves readers in collecting data
* contains numerous illustrative maps
* is written in a lively and engaging style, with information on 'posh and less-posh' dialects and spotting your dialect area.
Pronouns - Grammar and Representation (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today)
By Horst J. Simon, Heike Wiese
* Publisher:John Benjamins Publishing Co
* Number Of Pages:292
* Publication Date:2002-09
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:902722773X
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9789027227737
Product Description:
The contributions of this thematic collection centre around the typology of pronominal paradigms, the generation of syntactic and semantic representations for constructions containing pronouns, and the neurological underpinnings for linguistic distinctions that are relevant for the production and interpretation of these constructions. They come from different theoretical approaches and methodological backgrounds and take into account data from a wide range of Indoeuropean and non-Indoeuropean languages. Bringing together a cross-section of recent research on the grammar and representation of pronouns, the volume offers a kaleidoscope of studies united by the common topic of pronouns as a domain of language that exemplarily shows the interaction of different components responsible for computational (syntactic and semantic), lexical, and discourse-pragmatic processes.
A hand-book of the English Language,: For the use of Students of the Universities and Higher Classes of Schools
By Robert Gordon Latham
* Publisher:Walton and Maberly
* Number Of Pages:442
* Publication Date:1862
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:B000884MW6
* ISBN-13 / EAN:
PART I. GENERAL ETHNOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I. GERMANIC ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.—DATE.
§ 1. The first point to be remembered in the history of the English language, is that it was not the primitive and original tongue of any of the British Islands, nor yet of any portion of them. Indeed, of the whole of Great Britain it is not the language at the present moment. Welsh is spoken in Wales, Manks in the Isle of Man, and Scotch Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland; besides which there is the Irish Gaelic in Ireland.
§ 2. The next point to be considered is the real origin and the real affinities of the English language.
Its real origin is on the continent of Europe, and its real affinities are with certain languages there spoken. To speak more specifically, the native country of the English language is Germany; and the Germanic languages are those that are the most closely connected with our own. In Germany, languages and dialects allied to each other and allied to the mother-tongue of the English have been spoken from times anterior to history; and these, for most purposes of philology, may be considered as the aboriginal languages and dialects of that country.
§ 3. Accredited details of the different immigrations from Germany into Britain.—Until lately the details of the different Germanic invasions of England, both in respect to the particular tribes by which they were made, and the order in which they succeeded each other, were received with but little doubt, and as little criticism.
Respecting the tribes by which they were made, the current opinion was, that they were chiefly, if not exclusively, those of the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Angles.
Social Lives in Language - Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities: Celebrating the Work of Gillian Sankoff (Impact: Studies in Language and Society)
By Miriam Meyerhoff, Naomi Nagy
Particle Verbs in English: Syntax, Information Structure and Intonation.
By Nicole Dehe
* Publisher:Amsterdam: Benjamins 2002. (Linguistics Today)
* Number Of Pages:309
* Publication Date:2002-01-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:9027227802
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9789027227805
Introduction
The work presented in this book contributes to the discussion of a well-known construction that occurs in most, if not all, of the Germanic languages and has been referred to in the literature for example as verb-particle construction, phrasal verb, separable (complex) verb or particle verb.
Narrative and Identity (Studies in Narrative)
By Jens Brockmeier, Donal Carbaugh
* Publisher:John Benjamins Publishing Co.
* Number Of Pages:316
* Publication Date:2001-09-07
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:9027226415
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9789027226419
Product Description:
The starting point of this work was a conference on narrative and identity that took place at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna, in December of 1995. Scholars from psychology, philosophy, social sciences, literary theory, classics, psychiatry, communication, and film theory gathered to explore, from the vantage points of their disciplines and their individual work, the importance of narrative as an expressive embodiment of our experience, as a mode of communication, and as a form for understanding the world and ultimately ourselves. This book thoroughly covers such topics as: narrative - problems and promises of an alternative paradigm; metaphysics and narrative - singularities and multiplicities of self; narratives of national identity as group narratives; "You're marked" - breast cancer, tattoo, and the narrative performance of identity; identity and narrative in Piaget's autobiographies; from the end to the beginning - retrospective teleology in autobiography; and narrative, identity and the reconstruction of the self.
Rethinking Sequentiality: Linguistics Meets Conversational Interaction (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)
By Anita Fetzer, Christiane Meierkord
* Publisher:John Benjamins Publishing Co
* Number Of Pages:296
* Publication Date:2002-09
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:9027253439
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9789027253439
Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora (Pragmatics & Beyond New)
By Karin Aijmer; Anna-Brita Stenström
* Publisher: John Benjamins Pub.
* Number Of Pages: 273
* Publication Date: 2004
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:9027253625
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9789027253620
This book brings together a number of empirical studies that use corpora to study discourse patterns in speech and writing. It explores new trends in the area of text and discourse characterized by the alliance between text linguistics and areas such as corpus linguistics, genre analysis, literary stylistics and cross-linguistic studies. The contributions to the volume show how established corpora can be used to ask a number of new questions about the interface between speech and writing, the relation between grammar and discourse, academic discourse, cohesive markers, stylistic devices such as metaphor, deixis and non-verbal communication. The corpora used for text-analysis can also be tailor-made for the study of particular genres such as journal article abstracts, lectures, e-mailing list messages, headlines and titles. A recent development is to bring in contrastive data from bilingual corpora to show what is language-specific in the organization of the text.
Gender Shifts in the History of English (Studies in English Language)
Gender Shifts in the History of English (Studies in English Language)
By Anne Curzan
* Publisher:Cambridge University Press
* Number Of Pages:240
* Publication Date:2003-06-16
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0521820073
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780521820073
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
Based on extensive research, Anne Curzan's study makes a major contribution by providing historical perspective on controversial questions regarding the continuing evolution of gender definition. How and why did grammatical gender gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to "irregular agreement" (she for ships) and "sexist" language use (generic he) in Modern English? Finally, how is the language continuing to evolve 0n these respects?
A Comparative Grammar Of British English Dialects: Agreement, Gender, Relative Clauses (Topics in English Linguistics : 50.1) (Topics in English Linguistics)
By et al Bernd Kortmann (Editor)
* Publisher:Mouton de Gruyter
* Number Of Pages:371
* Publication Date:2005-05-30
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:3110182998
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9783110182996
* Binding:Hardcover
Product Description:
This volume offers qualitative as well as corpus-based quantitative studies on three domains of grammatical variation in the British Isles. All studies draw heavily on the Freiburg English Dialect Corpus (FRED), a computerized corpus for predominantly British English dialects comprising some 2.5 million words. Besides an account of FRED and the advantages which a functional-typological framework offers for the study of dialect grammar, the volume includes the following three substantial studies. Tanja Herrmann's study is the first systematic cross-regional study of relativization strategies for Scotland, Northern Ireland, and four major dialect areas in England. In her research design Hermann has included a number of issues crucial in typological research on relative clauses, above all the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy. Lukas Pietsch investigates the so-called Northern Subject Rule, a special agreement phenomenon known from Northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. His study is primarily based on the Northern Ireland Transcribed Corpus of Speech, but also on the FRED and SED data (Survey of English Dialects) for the North of England. Susanne Wagner is concerned with the phenomenon of pronominal gender, focussing especially on the typologically rather unique semantic gender system in the dialects of Southwest England. This volume will be of interest to dialectologists, sociolinguists, typologists, historical linguists, grammarians, and anyone interested in the structure of spontaneous spoken English.
Natural Grammar
By Scott Thornbury
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:220
Publication Date:2004-03-29
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0194386244
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780194386241
Product Description:
From word to phrase to sentence, this new lexical approach to grammar builds natural idiomatic English. Winner of the 2004 British Council ELT Innovation Award Natural Grammar shows you how one hundred important English keywords work, the phrases they generate, and the links they make. The emphasis is on natural-sounding language. Plenty of practice is provided in language building.
Logics for Linguistic Structures (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs)
By Kepser, Stephan
* Publisher:Mouton de Gruyter
* Number Of Pages:180
* Publication Date:2008-10-20
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:311020469X
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9783110204698
Product Description:
The contributions collected in this voume address central topics in theoretical and computational linguistics, such as quantification, types of context dependence and aspects concerning the formalisation of major grammatical frameworks, among others GB, DRT and HPSG. All contributions have in common a strong preference for logic as the major tool of analysis. The first main issue concerns the combination of DRT and HPSG styles of analysis into a single system for natural language processing. The second central issue concerns the logical and automata - theoretical foundations of descriptive formalisms presently in the focus of attention, for instance minimalism. A third issue is the significance of context and locality within an algorithmic notion of meaning. The last topic addressed concerns subclasses of empirically highly significant quantificational devices like proportionality quantifiers and quantifiers which give rise to sound and complete logics for non-trivial fragments of English. The volume will be of great benefit for theoretical and computational linguists, computer scientists, philosophers, and logicians.
Words, Worlds, and Material Girls: Language, Gender, Globalization (Language, Power and Social Process)
By McElhinny, Bonnie S.
* Publisher:Mouton de Gruyter
* Number Of Pages:454
* Publication Date:2008-04-15
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:3110195755
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9783110195750
Product Description:
This wide-ranging volume explores how gender and language are used and transformed to discuss, enact, and project social differences in light of global economic and political changes in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries. It presents analyses of language and gender from a broad spectrum of national contexts: Catalonia, Canada, China, India, Japan, Nigeria, Vietnam, Philippines, Tonga, and the United States. Cases studies consider language and gender in changing workplaces, schools and immigrant integration workshops, as well as in new and emerging sites for consumption and the production of identity. They also analyze the changing meanings of multilingualism, and the construction of ideologies about gender and language in colonial and postcolonial/national ideologies. The papers engage with and contribute to theoretical conceptualizations of globalization, cosmopolitanism, (post)colonialism, (trans)nationalism, and public spheres by drawing on a variety of sociolinguistic analytic strategies (variation analysis, media analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of speaking, sociology of language, colonial discourse analysis).
The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)
By Geert Booij
* Publisher:Oxford University Press, USA
* Number Of Pages:352
* Publication Date:2007-12-07
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:0199226245
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780199226245
Product Description:
Geert Booij's popular textbook examines how words are formed, compounded, and inflected in different languages. It shows how, when, and why to use methods of morphological analysis and explains how morphology relates to syntax, phonology, and semantics. The author considers the universal characteristics of morphology and how these are reflected in the workings of mind. The revised edition has been revised and updated throughout; it has a full glossary and a new chapter on the field's most notorious problem: the status of the word.
'The Grammar of Words by Geert Booij covers a broad range of topics from structural questions to psycholinguistic issues and problems of language change. This introduction to morphology is thorough and accessible and, like other works by this renowned author, especially strong at showing the significance of empirical facts for theoretical reasoning.' Ingo Plag, University of Siegen
Contemporary Views on Architecture and Representations in Phonology (Current Studies in Linguistics)
By Eric Raimy, Charles E. Cairns
* Publisher:The MIT Press
* Number Of Pages:424
* Publication Date:2009-05-29
* ISBN-10 / ASIN:026218270X
* ISBN-13 / EAN:9780262182706
Product Description:
The essays in this volume address foundational questions in phonology that cut across different schools of thought within the discipline. The theme of modularity runs through them all, however, and these essays demonstrate the benefits of the modular approach to phonology, either investigating interactions among distinct modules or developing specific aspects of representation within a particular module. Although the contributors take divergent views on a range of issues, they agree on the importance of representations and questions of modularity in phonology. Their essays address the status of phonological features, syllable theory, metrical structure, the architecture of the phonological component, and interaction among components of phonology.
In the early 1990s the rise of Optimality Theory—which suggested that pure computation would solve the problems of representations and modularity—eclipsed the centrality of these issues for phonology. This book is unique in offering a coherent view of phonology that is not Optimality Theory based. The essays in this book, all by distinguished phonologists, demonstrate that computation and representation are inherently linked; they do not deny Optimality Theory but attempt to move the field of phonology beyond it.
Contributors: Juliette Blevins, Charles E. Cairns, Andrea Calabrese, G. Nick Clements, B. Elan Dresher, Morris Halle, Harry van der Hulst, William J. Idsardi, Ellen Kaisse, Andrew Nevins, Thomas C. Purnell, Eric Raimy, Keren Rice, Charles Reiss, Bert Vaux, Aaron Wolfe
Current Studies in Linguistics 48