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Books in History and philosophy of language linguistics

  • Linguistics and Philosophy

    The Controversial Interface
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 13
    • R. Harré + 1 more
    • English
    As hopes that generative linguistics might solve philosophical problems about the mind give way to disillusionment, old problems concerning the relationship between linguistics and philosophy survive unresolved. This collection surveys the historical engagement between the two, and opens up avenues for further reflection. In Part 1 two contrasting views are presented of the interface nowadays called 'philosophy of linguistics'. Part 2 gives a detailed historical survey of the engagement of analytic philosophy with linguistic problems during the present century, and sees the imposition by philosophers of an 'exploratory' model of thinking as a major challenge to the discipline of linguistics. Part 3 poses the problem of whether linguistics is dedicated to describing independently existing linguistic structures or to imposing its own structures on linguistic phenomena. In Part 4 Harris points out some similarities in the way an eminent linguist and an eminent philosopher invoke the analogy between languages and games; while Taylor analyses the rationale of our metalinguistic claims and their relationship to linguistic theorizing. Providing a wide range of views and ideas this book will be of interest to all those interested and involved in the interface of philosophy and linguistics.

  • Concise History of the Language Sciences

    From the Sumerians to the Cognitivists
    • 1st Edition
    • E.F.K. Koerner + 1 more
    • English
    This book presents in a single volume a comprehensive history of the language sciences, from ancient times through to the twentieth century. While there has been a concentration on those traditions that have the greatest international relevance, a particular effort has been made to go beyond traditional Eurocentric accounts, and to cover a broad geographical spread. For the twentieth century a section has been devoted to the various trends, schools, and theoretical framework developed in Europe, North America and Australasia over the past seventy years. There has also been a concentration on those approaches in linguistic theory which can be expected to have some direct relevance to work being done at the beginning of the twenty-first century or those of which a knowledge is needed for the full understanding of the history of linguistic sciences through the last half of this century. The last section of this book reviews the applications of some of these findings. Based on the foundation provided by the award winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics this volume provides an excellent focal point of reference for anyone interested in the history of the language sciences.

  • Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics (1910-1911)

    (F. de Saussure - Troisième Cours de Linguistique Générale (1910-1911)
    • 1st Edition
    • R. Harris + 1 more
    • English
    The notes taken by Saussure's student Emile Constantin were not available to the editors of the published Cours de linguistique générale (1916), and came to light only after the second world war. They have never been published in their entirety.The third and last course of lectures, of which Constantin kept this very full record, is generally considered to represent a more advanced version of Saussure's teaching than the earlier two. It is clear that Constantin's notebooks offer a text which differs in a number of significant respects from the Cours published by Saussure's original editors, and bring forward ideas which do not emerge in the 1916 publication. They constitute unique evidence concerning the final stages of Saussure's thinking about language.This edition of the notes is accompanied by an introduction and a full English translation of the text. There has been no attempt made by Komatsu and Harris, to turn the English into readable prose. Constantin's notes, even as revised by their author, retain the infelicities, repetitions, abruptness - occasionally incoherences - that betray the circumstances of their origin.The volume constitutes an important landmark in the history of modern linguistics and provides essential documentation for all scholars and libraries specializing in the subject.

  • Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language and Linguistics

    • 1st Edition
    • Alex Barber + 1 more
    • English
    The application of philosophy to language study, and language study to philosophy, has experienced demonstrable intellectual growth and diversification in recent decades. Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language and Linguistics comprehensively analyzes and evaluates many of the most interesting facets of this vibrant field. An edited collection of articles taken from the award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition, this volume acts as a single-stop desk reference resource for the field, comprising contributions from the foremost scholars of philosophy of linguistics in their various interdisciplinary specializations. From Plato's Cratylus to Semantic and Epistemic Holism, this fascinating work authoritatively unpacks the diverse and multi-layered concepts of meaning, expression, identity, truth, and countless other themes and subjects straddling the linguistic-philosoph... meridian, in 175 articles and over 900 pages.

  • Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories

    • 1st Edition
    • K. Brown + 1 more
    • English
    Syntactic description and theoretical syntax are central concerns in linguistics. For thirty years, the search for a single formal model of syntax has been the central task in the field; many theories have been proposed, some discarded, none universally adopted, and the problem continues to challenge linguists.The award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics included many excellent articles on all major syntactic theories, current or past, written either by their originators or by eminent practitioners. These articles are now collected here in a single volume. All have been thoroughly updated; several entirely new articles have been added, while others have been significantly revised or extended.This collection gives a full and fascinating picture of the evolution of linguists' attempts to wrestle with syntax. The comprehensive inclusion of less popular theories alongside more current ones provides the researcher with the context and perspectives necessary to appreciate why some avenues have been pursued, while others have not. This is valuable for the development both of the more generally accepted approaches, and of others now being revived or introduced.The editors' extensive introduction gives an excellent overview of the theories covered and of the issues involved, and places each article in its historical and theoretical context. The reader is supported by the inclusion of a substantial Glossary and name and subject indexes. The Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories will be an invaluable reference work, not only for those studying specific theories, but also for those with a wider interest in matters of linguistic theory.

  • Notes from the Linguistic Underground

    Syntax and Semantics
    • 1st Edition
    • James D. McCawley
    • English
    Syntax and Semantics, Volume 7: Notes from the Linguistic Underground is a collection of articles that were written in the 1960s, which has never before appeared in a regular, English language publication. The papers contained in this compendium provide the history and information on the development of transformational grammar and generative semantics. The book presents articles that discuss topics on reflexivization, transformations, past tense replacement and the modal system, and pro-sentential forms and their implications for English sentence structure. Papers that tackle syntactic orientation, some constraints on pronominalization, discourse referents, and the verb-object agreement rule and the wh-movement rule in Hungarian are likewise included. Linguists and linguistic historians will find the book invaluable.