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Author: G. Edward Barton
Publisher: Bradford Books
Published: 1987
Total Pages: 350
ISBN-13: 9780262524056
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A nontechnical introduction to complexity theory: its strengths, its weaknesses, and how it can be used to study grammars.
Author: Douglas Biber
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-12-31
Total Pages: 528
ISBN-13: 1000481921
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This collection brings together the authors' previous research with new work on the Register-Functional (RF) approach to grammatical complexity, offering a unified theoretical account for its further study. The book traces the development of the RF approach from its foundations in two major research strands of linguistics: the study of sociolinguistic variation and the text-linguistic study of register variation. Building on this foundation, the authors demonstrate the RF framework at work across a series of corpus-based research studies focused specifically on grammatical complexity in English. The volume highlights early work exploring patterns of grammatical complexity in present-day spoken and written registers as well as subsequent studies which extend this research to historical patterns of register variation and the application of RF research to the study of writing development for L1 and L2 English university students. Taken together, along with the addition of introductory chapters connecting the different studies, the volume offers readers with a comprehensive resource to better understand the RF approach to grammatical complexity and its implications for future research. The volume will appeal to students and scholars with research interests in either descriptive linguistics or applied linguistics, especially those interested in grammatical complexity and empirical, corpus-based approaches.
Author: Francesca Di Garbo
Publisher: Language Science Press
Published:
Total Pages: 350
ISBN-13: 3961101787
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity.
Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher:
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 387
ISBN-13: 0199685304
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book examines the question of whether languages can differ in grammatical complexity and, if so, how relative complexity differences might be measured. The volume differs from others devoted to the question of complexity in language in that the authors all approach the problem from the point of view of formal grammatical theory, psycholinguistics, or neurolinguistics. Chapters investigate a number of key issues in grammatical complexity, taking phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic considerations into account. These include what is often called the 'trade-off problem', namely whether complexity in one grammatical component is necessarily balanced by simplicity in another; and the question of interpretive complexity, that is, whether and how one might measure the difficulty for the hearer in assigning meaning to an utterance and how such complexity might be factored in to an overall complexity assessment. Measuring Grammatical Complexity brings together a number of distinguished scholars in the field, and will be of interest to linguists of all theoretical stripes from advanced undergraduate level upwards, particularly those working in the areas of morphosyntax, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics.
Author: Peter W. Culicover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2013-04-04
Total Pages: 327
ISBN-13: 019965459X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book combines ideas about the architecture of grammar and language acquisition, processing, and change to explain why languages show regular patterns when there is so much irregularity in their use and so much complexity when there is such regularity in linguistic phenomena. Peter Culicover argues that the structure of language can be understood and explained in terms of two kinds of complexity: firstly that of the correspondence between form and meaning; secondly in the real-time processes involved in the construction of meanings in linguistic expressions. Mainstream syntactic theory has focused largely on regularities within and across languages, relegating to the periphery exceptional and idiosyncratic phenomena. But, the author argues, a languages irregular and unique features offer fundamental insights into the nature of language, how it changes, and how it is produced and understood. Peter Culicover's new book offers a pertinent and original contribution to key current debates in linguistic theory. It will interest scholars and advanced students of linguists of all theoretical persuasions.
Author: Matti Miestamo
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 9789027231048
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Language complexity has recently attracted considerable attention from linguists of many different persuasions. This volume a thematic selection of papers from the conference Approaches to Complexity in Language, held in Helsinki, August 2005 is the first collection of articles devoted to the topic. The sixteen chapters of the volume approach the notion of language complexity from a variety of perspectives. The papers are divided into three thematic sections that reflect the central themes of the book: Typology and theory, Contact and change, Creoles and pidgins. The book is mainly intended for typologists, historical linguists, contact linguists and creolists, as well as all linguists interested in language complexity in general. As the first collective volume on a very topical theme, the book is expected to be of lasting interest to the linguistic community.
Author: Geoffrey Sampson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2009-02-26
Total Pages: 328
ISBN-13: 0191567663
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book presents a challenge to the widely-held assumption that human languages are both similar and constant in their degree of complexity. For a hundred years or more the universal equality of languages has been a tenet of faith among most anthropologists and linguists. It has been frequently advanced as a corrective to the idea that some languages are at a later stage of evolution than others. It also appears to be an inevitable outcome of one of the central axioms of generative linguistic theory: that the mental architecture of language is fixed and is thus identical in all languages and that whereas genes evolve languages do not. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable reopens the debate. Geoffrey Sampson's introductory chapter re-examines and clarifies the notion and theoretical importance of complexity in language, linguistics, cognitive science, and evolution. Eighteen distinguished scholars from all over the world then look at evidence gleaned from their own research in order to reconsider whether languages do or do not exhibit the same degrees and kinds of complexity. They examine data from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and social complexity and relate their findings to the causes and processes of language change. Their arguments are frequently controversial and provocative; their conclusions add up to an important challenge to conventional ideas about the nature of language. The authors write readably and accessibly with no recourse to unnecessary jargon. This fascinating book will appeal to all those interested in the interrelations between human nature, culture, and language.
Author: Östen Dahl
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Published: 2004-08-31
Total Pages: 345
ISBN-13: 9027295255
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book studies linguistic complexity and the processes by which it arises and is maintained, focusing not so much on what one can say in a language as how it is said. Complexity is not seen as synonymous with “difficulty” but as an objective property of a system – a measure of the amount of information needed to describe or reconstruct it. Grammatical complexity is the result of historical processes often subsumed under the rubric of grammaticalization and involves what can be called mature linguistic phenomena, that is, features that take time to develop. The nature and characteristics of such processes are discussed in detail, as well as the external and internal factors that favor or disfavor stability and change in language.
Author: Volchenkov Dimitri
Publisher: World Scientific
Published: 2018-01-17
Total Pages: 284
ISBN-13: 981323251X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The book is an introduction, for both graduate students and newcomers to the field of the modern theory of mesoscopic complex systems, time series, hypergraphs and graphs, scaled random walks, and modern information theory. As these are applied for the exploration and characterization of complex systems. Our self-consistent review provides the necessary basis for consistency. We discuss a number of applications such diverse as urban structures and musical compositions. Contents: Perplexity of ComplexityPreliminaries: Permutations, Partitions, Probabilities and InformationTheory of Extreme EventsStatistical Basis of Inequality and Discounting the Future and InequalityElements of Graph Theory. Adjacency, Walks, and EntropiesExploring Graph Structures by Random WalksWe Shape Our Buildings: Thereafter They Shape UsComplexity of Musical Harmony Readership: Graduate student in information theory, complex systems and mathematical modeling. Keywords: Complex Systems and Processes;Extreme Events;Discounting the Future and Inequality;Urban Environments;Complexity of Musical HarmonyReview: Key Features: The book provides the unique treatment of the modern theory of mesoscopic complex systems, time series, hypergraphs and graphs, scaled random walks, and modern information theory as applied for exploration and characterization of complex systemsThe book shows how the concepts of complexity theory is applicable to the problem fo survival, urban studies, income inequality, musical harmonyThe book might be used as recommended reading for a course
Author: Peter Culicover
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2013-03-28
Total Pages: 327
ISBN-13: 0191625930
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book combines ideas about the architecture of grammar and language acquisition, processing, and change to explain why languages show regular patterns when there is so much irregularity in their use and so much complexity when there is such regularity in linguistic phenomena. Peter Culicover argues that the structure of language can be understood and explained in terms of two kinds of complexity: firstly that of the correspondence between form and meaning; secondly in the real-time processes involved in the construction of meanings in linguistic expressions. Mainstream generative theory is based on inherent linguistic competence and on the regularities within and across languages, with the exceptional aspects of any language frequently put to one side. But a language's irregular and unique features offer, the author argues, fundamental insights into both the nature of language and the way it is produced and understood. Peter Culicover's new book offers a pertinent and original contribution to key current debates in linguistic theory. It will interest scholars and advanced students of linguists of all theoretical persuasions.
