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Author: Steven Weisler
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9780262731256
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Along with coverage of phonics, phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax, the text covers more unconventional topics including language and culture, and language evolution."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Rob Pensalfini
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Published: 2014-01-15
Total Pages: 405
ISBN-13: 9027270910
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume explores how linguistic theories inform the ways in which languages are described. Theories, as representations of linguistic categories, guide the field linguist to look for various phenomena without presupposing their necessary existence and provide the tools to account for various sets of data across different languages. A goal of linguistic description is to represent the full range of language structures for any given language. The chapters in this book cover various sub-disciplines of linguistics including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, language acquisition, and anthropological linguistics, drawing upon theoretical approaches such as prosodic Phonology, Enhancement theory, Distributed Morphology, Minimalist syntax, Lexical Functional Grammar, and Kinship theory. The languages described in this book include Australian languages (Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan), Romance languages as well as English. This volume will be of interest to researchers in both descriptive and theoretical linguistics.
Author: Michael TOMASELLO
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-06-30
Total Pages: 399
ISBN-13: 0674044398
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In this groundbreaking book, Tomasello presents a comprehensive usage-based theory of language acquisition. Drawing together a vast body of empirical research in cognitive science, linguistics, and developmental psychology, Tomasello demonstrates that we don't need a self-contained "language instinct" to explain how children learn language. Their linguistic ability is interwoven with other cognitive abilities.
Author: Karl Bühler
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Published: 2011-04-27
Total Pages: 618
ISBN-13: 9027286868
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Karl Bühler (1879–1963) was one of the leading theoreticians of language of the twentieth century. Although primarily a psychologist, Bühler devoted much of his attention to the study of language and language theory. His masterwork Sprachtheorie (1934) quickly gained recognition in the fields of linguistics, semiotics, the philosophy of language and the psychology of language. This new edition of the English translation of Bühler’s theory begins with a survey on ‘Bühler’s legacy’ for modern linguistics (Werner Abraham), followed by the Theory of Language, and finally with a special ‘Postscript: Twenty-five Years Later ...’ (Achim Eschbach). Bühler’s theory is divided into four parts. Part I discusses the four axioms or principles of language research, the most famous of which is the first, the organon model, the base of Bühler's instrumental view of language. Part II treats the role of indexicality in language and discusses deixis as one determinant of speech. Part III examines the symbolic field, dealing with context, onomatopoeia and the function of case. Part IV deals with the elements of language and their organization (syllabification, the definition of the word, metaphor, anaphora, etc).The text is accompanied by an Introduction (Achim Eschbach); Translator's preface (Donald Fraser Goodwin); Glossary of terms; and a Bibliography of cited works.
Author: Jerome Feldman
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2008-01-25
Total Pages: 758
ISBN-13: 0262296888
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In From Molecule to Metaphor, Jerome Feldman proposes a theory of language and thought that treats language not as an abstract symbol system but as a human biological ability that can be studied as a function of the brain, as vision and motor control are studied. This theory, he writes, is a "bridging theory" that works from extensive knowledge at two ends of a causal chain to explicate the links between. Although the cognitive sciences are revealing much about how our brains produce language and thought, we do not yet know exactly how words are understood or have any methodology for finding out. Feldman develops his theory in computer simulations—formal models that suggest ways that language and thought may be realized in the brain. Combining key findings and theories from biology, computer science, linguistics, and psychology, Feldman synthesizes a theory by exhibiting programs that demonstrate the required behavior while remaining consistent with the findings from all disciplines. After presenting the essential results on language, learning, neural computation, the biology of neurons and neural circuits, and the mind/brain, Feldman introduces specific demonstrations and formal models of such topics as how children learn their first words, words for abstract and metaphorical concepts, understanding stories, and grammar (including "hot-button" issues surrounding the innateness of human grammar). With this accessible, comprehensive book Feldman offers readers who want to understand how our brains create thought and language a theory of language that is intuitively plausible and also consistent with existing scientific data at all levels.
Author: Zellig Sabbettai Harris
Publisher:
Published: 1991
Total Pages: 456
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Written by one of the most respected figures in American linguistics, this book develops an approach to the analysis of language on a mathematical model. Harris presents a formal theory of language structure, in which syntax is characterized as an orderly system of departure from random combinings of sounds, words, and all the elements of language. He argues that the combining of words in a sentence constitutes a mathematical object, and that each departure from randomness is a contribution to the structure and meaning of a sentence. Discussing the differences in the structure and content of language, mathematics, and music, Harris shows that the use of language in a science constitutes a distinguishable sub-language. Remarkable and compelling, Harris's magnum opus will be considered the classical analysis of the structuring of information and development of language.
Author: Nina Hyams
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2012-12-06
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 9400946384
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book is perhaps the most stunning available demonstration of the explanatory power of the parametric approach to linguistic theory. It is akin, not to a deductive proof, but to the discovery of a footprint in a far-off place which leaves an archeologist elated. The book is full of intricate reasoning, but the stunning aspect is that the reasoning moves between not only complex syntax and diverse languages, but it makes predictions about what two-year-old children will assume about the jumble of linguistic input that confronts them. Those predictions, Hyams shows, are supported by a discriminating analysis of acquisition data in English and Italian. Let us examine the linguistic context for a moment before we discuss her theory. The ultimate issue in linguistic theory is the explanation of how a child can acquire any human language. To capture this fact we must posit an innate mechanism which meets two opposite constraints: it must be broad enough to account for the diversity of human language, and narrow enough so that the child does not make irrelevant hypotheses about his own language, particularly ones from which there is no recovery. That is, a child must not posit a grammar which permits all of the sentences of a language as well as other sentences which are not in the language. In a word, the child must not create a language in which one cannot make adult discriminations between grammatical and ungrammatical.
Author: Deborah K. W. Modrak
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 0521772664
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This is a book about Aristotle's philosophy of language, interpreted in a framework that provides a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and science. The aims of the book are to explicate the description of meaning contained in De Interpretatione and to show the relevance of that theory of meaning to much of the rest of Arisotle's philosophy. In the process Deborah Modrak reveals how that theory of meaning has been much maligned.
Author: Carl J. Becker
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2004-12
Total Pages: 413
ISBN-13: 0595327109
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The discipline of linguistics is a perfect example of the limitations of the modern academy. The combination of social taboos that make certain subject matter unfit for general knowledge and discovery, and the ever-narrowing specialization of scientists leaves us with an intellectual institution that can no longer do anything but apply, repair, and justify the dogma of Victorian Cosmology that is the rule all must follow. Linguistics should be one of the most interesting subjects, considering it is the study of our most valuable and revealing cultural asset, language. However, recent publications from the linguistic department for public consumption have been some of the most trivial and boring intellectual expositions that have ever been put between two covers. Using the entire database of science, we look at the acquisition of language and how it forms our cultural perspective on life, including theories of language evolution. We develop the theory of the evolution of language from song, one of the few suppositions that Charles Darwin actually got right. From this basis we move on to the roots of Proto-Indo-European, which we call Bhear Tongue. Bhear Tongue is essentially the Eurasian language family dimly perceived by one of the greatest linguists of the twentieth century, Joseph Greenberg. From this perspective we can now retell the tribal stories from Iberia to Siberia, showing a common origin and motivation for human science and religion.
