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Books in Arts and humanities

Elsevier's Arts and Humanities titles encompass a rich spectrum of scholarship that explores human culture, history, philosophy, and creative expression. These works offer deep insights into language, literature, visual arts, and critical theory, supporting the academic community in understanding diverse perspectives and cultural legacies. Designed for scholars, educators, and students, this collection bridges classic studies with contemporary issues, fostering a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the human experience.

  • Wolf and Man

    Evolution in Parallel
    • 1st Edition
    • Roberta L. Hall + 1 more
    • English
    Wolf and Man: Evolution in Parallel is a collection of papers that discusses certain crucial attributes of humans including traits that are shared with other social predators. Some papers describe the wolf as the equal of man—the animal is a social hunter of large game, disregards human boundaries and properties, and consume livestock when it is necessary. The wolf's will to survive is as great as that of man, and brings along many resources to the competition. Several papers review the behavior and culture of man, wolf, dog, and the Chipewyan people who hunted caribou. Another paper examines the communication, cognitive mapping, and strategy in wolves and hominids. Hominids have developed cognitive maps, forced by their predation on large animals to cover wider ranges, to communicate and form complex sequences of utterances. One paper notes that the wolf was able to penetrate on every continent except Australia and Africa due to the Australian continent's isolation. In Africa, there is no ecological space for another highly organized social hunter of large game. The collection can be appreciated by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and scientists involved in paleontology and human evolution.

  • Generative Phonology

    Description and Theory
    • 1st Edition
    • Michael Kenstowicz + 1 more
    • English
    Generative Phonology: Description and Theory provides a basic understanding of the fundamental concepts of generative phonology and the applications of these concepts in further study of phonological structure. This book is composed of 10 chapters and begins with a survey of phonology in the overall model of generative grammar and introduces the principles of phonetics to. The subsequent chapters introduce the fundamental concept of a phonological rule that relates an underlying representation to a phonetic representation and this concept is applied to the analysis of morphophonemic alternation. These topics are followed by a presentation of phonological sketches of four diverse languages in terms of rules relating underlying and phonetic representations, as well as the major corpus-internal principles and techniques of phonological analysis. The discussion then shifts to the theoretical aspects of phonology, the various degrees of abstractness, and the proposals to limit the divergence between underlying and phonetic representation. Other chapters deal with some of the issues revolving around the representation of sounds and the various hypotheses as to how phonological rules apply to convert the underlying representation to the phonetic representation, particularly the kinds of considerations that motivate rule-ordering statements. The last chapters explore the major notational devices commonly employed in the formulation of phonological rules and the role of syntactic and lexical information in controlling the application of phonological rules. This book is intended primarily for linguistics and phonologists.

  • Handbook on Parent Education

    • 1st Edition
    • Marvin J. Fine
    • English
    Handbook on Parent Education presents a contemporary picture of the state of the parent education movement. It tackles a number of critical issues such as the programs that are available or when parent education should begin. Different models of parent education are described, along with parenting programs for youth. The application of parenting programs for specific groups, including foster parents, parents of preschoolers, abusive parents, and parents of handicapped children, is also discussed. Comprised of 14 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the parent education movement as well as several prototype programs and some ethical issues. The distinction between education and therapy is explained, and parent education with special interest groups is described. In addition, problems of research and evaluation and a projection for the future are presented. Subsequent chapters focus on the state of the nuclear family in American society during the 1970s; Rudolf Dreikurs' impact on childrearing practices and his contribution to individual psychology, together with the social context of child behavior; Haim Ginott's approach to parent education; and the effects of parent effectiveness training on families. Transactional analysis approaches to parent education and parent education as a strategy for the prevention of child abuse are also examined. This monograph will appeal to educators, parents, sociologists, and educational psychologists.

  • Topics in Phonological Theory

    • 1st Edition
    • Michael Kenstowicz + 1 more
    • English
    Topics in Phonological Theory is a six-chapter text that provides an explication of some of the most important problems in phonological theory, with a few, necessarily tentative, solutions. The first chapter deals with the problem of abstractness in terms of a series of successively weaker constraints that might be placed on the relationship between the underlying and phonetic representations of a morpheme. The second chapter begins with a discussion of the various ways in which the phonetic basis of a rule may be lost in the course of historical change, which lays the groundwork for a lengthy survey of the types of grammatical and lexical conditions that may control the application of a phonological rule. The third chapter describes the constraints and conditions on phonological representations, particularly the domain of these constraints, the level at which they hold, and their duplication of phonological rules. The fourth chapter examines the problem of natural rule interactions, focusing on Kiparsky’s theories of maximal utilization and opacity-transparency and their deficiencies. The fifth chapter deals with Chomsky and Halle’s simultaneous application principle as well as with more recent proposals The sixth chapter compares the relative merits of global rules versus rule ordering for the description of opaque rule interactions. This book is intended primarily for linguistics.

  • The Australopithecine Face

    • 1st Edition
    • Yoel Rak
    • English
    The Australopithecine Face provides an introduction to the interpretation of the facial skeleton of Australopithecus, a part of the anatomy well represented in the African collections. This book presents important morphological differences between the early hominid taxa and interprets them in a biochemical, functional, evolutionary framework. Organized into seven chapters, this book begins with an overview of the description of the face of the four species of Australopithecus, extending to comparisons both within the genus and with other primates. This text then provides an analysis of the facial morphology of Australopithecus in terms of structural significance. Other chapters consider the taxonomic and phylogenetic status of the australopithecine species in light of the description and comparison. This book discusses as well the changes in the morphology and topography of the facial mask. The final chapter deals with the phylogenetic assignment of the different species. This book is a valuable resource for anthropologists.

  • Norms of Word Association

    • 1st Edition
    • Leo Postman + 1 more
    • English
    Norms of Word Association contains a heterogeneous collection of word association norms. This book brings together nine sets of association norms that were collected independently at different times during a 15-year period. Each chapter is a self-contained unit. The order in which the norms are presented is arbitrary, although an attempt is made to group together norms that seem to belong together. The 1952 Minnesota norms are presented first, due to "age" and in recognition of the fact that a number of the norms that follow are direct outgrowths of this work. The next three norms in this collection are responses to the Russell-Jenkins stimuli obtained from subjects representing different linguistic communities. A summary of association norms collected from British and Australian subjects are reported along with association norms from German and French college students and French workmen. Four sets of norms that are not directly related to the 1952 Minnesota collection are included. The text will be of interest to historians and researchers in the field of verbal learning and verbal behavior.

  • A Century of Controversy

    Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960
    • 1st Edition
    • Elman R Service
    • E. A. Hammel
    • English
    A Century of Controversy: Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960 is an assessment of the history of ethnology in terms of its intellectual progress, with emphasis on the controversial issues that were broached between 1860 and 1960. Two related philosophical or theoretical poses that characterized the prominent ethnological thinkers of this period, and earlier, are related to this phenomenon. One was the prevalent positivism, the other the belief in human progress as a form of social, cultural, and mental evolution. Comprised of 19 chapters, this volume begins by looking at several eminent scholars dealing more closely with the subject of ethnology, including Henry Maine and John F. McLennan in Great Britain; Johann J. Bachofen in Switzerland; and Fustel de Coulanges in France. In particular, the chapter examines the disagreement among Maine, Bachofen, McLennan, and Fustel de Coulanges as to the nature of the earliest society and its form of marriage; the nature of the evolutionary transformations of society (especially from primitive society to civilization); and the actual meaning and function of kinship terminology. The next two chapters describe the positive, useful discoveries as well as the mistakes and weaknesses of Lewis H. Morgan's work, with particular reference to his classificatory kinship nomenclature. Subsequent sections focus on controversies surrounding kinship terminology; social structure; the origins of government; the economic life of primitive peoples; and society and culture. This book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology.

  • Learning C with Fractals

    • 1st Edition
    • Roger T. Stevens
    • English
    Learning C with Fractals provides the fundamentals of the C programming language and the generation of fractals. The book is comprised of 21 chapters that discuss the aspects of the C programming language. The text begins with an introductory chapter that provides the basic hardware requirements and basic information to get the student started. Subsequent chapters tackle the writing and compiling of C programs; the main program and functions; the program's interaction with DOS (Disk Operating System); and the operators and expressions in C. Topics on initializing variables, conditional statements, manipulating strings, and the different programming functions are covered as well. Computer programmers and those interested in learning computer programming will find the book useful.

  • Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Change

    • 1st Edition
    • Ben G. Blount + 1 more
    • English
    Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Change focuses on the influence of sociocultural terms on the forms of languages. The selection first underscores the sociocultural dimensions of language change and language evolution and speech style. Discussions focus on the relation of speech style and language evolution, linguistic evidence of language evolution, autonomy of code and style, language contact phenomena, and extension of the concept of language. The book then takes a look at speech and social prestige in the Belizian speech community; Japanese numeral classifiers; and speculations on the growth of ethnobotanical nomenclature. Topics include appearance of varietal names, differentiation and formation of specific names, six universal categories of ethnobotanical nomenclature, salience of speech, and prestige, social success, and language. The publication elaborates on color categorization in West Futunese; creolization and syntactic change in New Guinea Tok Pisin; relexification processes in Philippine Creole Spanish; and the historical and sociocultural aspects of the distribution of linguistic variants in highland Chiapas, Mexico. The selection is a valuable source of data for language experts and researchers interested in the sociocultural dimensions of language change.

  • Prehistory of the Nile Valley

    • 1st Edition
    • Fred Wendorf + 1 more
    • Stuart Struever
    • English
    Studies in Archeology: Prehistory of the Nile Valley provides information pertinent to the prehistoric settlements along the Nile Valley. This book presents brief descriptions and the characteristics of the primary archeological taxonomic entities defined in the post-Nubia work. Organized into two parts encompassing 13 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the physiography of the Nile Valley and the Nile River, which gives fertility to the desert and attracts people to live beside its banks. This text then describes the geology of the El-Kilh area that lies on the west bank of the Nile about 15 km north of Idfu. Other chapters consider the series of lake aggradations and recessions during the Holocene in the Fayum Depression. This book discusses as well the development of the landscape at Dishna. The final chapter deals with the abundant geological and archeological data in Nubia. This book is a valuable resource for anthropologists.

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