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    • Current Issues in Mathematical Linguistics

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 56
      • June 28, 2014
      • C. Martín-Vide
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      The present volume contains some selected topics of current interest around the world in the mathematical analysis of natural language. The book is divided into four sections:- analytical algebraic models- models from the theory of formal grammars and automata, with interest mainly in syntax- model-theoretic concepts in semantics or pragmatics, and- a final section containing some applications in computational linguistics.The varied perspectives illustrated in the book confirm that Mathematical Linguistics has finally introduced scientific methods into a previously fuzzy field, through the use of mathematical reasoning. The text will contribute to a fruitful convergence between linguists, mathematicians, logicians, computer scientists, cognitive scientists and others interested in the formal treatment of natural language and the research of its properties.

    • The Discourse of Negotiation

      • 1st Edition
      • June 28, 2014
      • A. Firth
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      The study of negotiation has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent decades, yet rarely have discourse analysts applied their particular concerns and interests to the phenomenon. Although a fundamental characteristic of negotiation is linguistic action, the detailed study of negotiation as a communicative, discourse activity is in its infancy. In the first collection of its kind, Alan Firth has brought together 14 original studies of negotiation discourse.Drawing on insights and methodologies from discourse and conversation analysis, pragmatics, ethnography and ethnomethodology, the book examines negotiations in a wide range of workplaces, including the US Federal Trade Commission, management-union meetings, doctors' surgeries, travel agencies, international trading houses in Denmark, Belgium and Australia, Swedish social welfare offices, and consumer helplines. Collectively, the book explores the notion of negotiation both as a formal encounter and as a gloss for more informal decision-making activities.Questions specifically addressed include: what is the interactional character of negotiation? How are negotiations related to the work context? And how are negotiations undertaken linguistically - as discourse-based activities? Answers are sought by utilising transcripts of real-life instances of negotiation. This allows for finely-detailed descriptions of the observed activities, providing important insight into the discourse-context relationship, the interactional bases of work acitivities, and the communicative processes of negotiation.

    • Finite Automata

      • 1st Edition
      • June 28, 2014
      • A. de Vries
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      This dictionary supplies associations which have been evoked by certain words, signs, etc. in Western civilization in the past, and which may float to the surface again tomorrow; for however 'daringly new' a modern use of imagery may look, it generally appears to have roots in what has been said and done in the past. No fine distinctions have been made between symbols (in the limited sense), allegories, metaphors, signs, types, images, etc. (not to mention 'ascending' and 'descending' symbols), since such subtle distinctions, however sensible from a scientific point of view, are useless to a person struggling with the deeper comprehension (and thus appreciation) of a particular 'symbol'.

    • Sociolinguistic Metatheory

      • 1st Edition
      • June 28, 2014
      • E. Figueroa
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      Linguistics is a discipline with ever expanding boundaries and interests. Despite the narrow definition of linguistics which dominates academia, sub-fields continue to flourish and ways of doing linguistics continue to expand. As ways to do linguistics increase, and as approaches to linguistics accumulate over time, it becomes increasingly necessary for students of linguistics to have ways of understanding and comparing developments in linguistics.Sociolin... Metatheory is a book which explains foundational developments in linguistics by taking the past three decades of developments in sociolinguistics and relating them to contemporaneous developments in received linguistics. Sociolinguistic Metatheory takes the reader through the basic philosophical questions which drive linguistic research. It looks in detail at three models of sociolinguistics - Dell Hymes and the Ethnography of Communication, William Labov and Sociolinguistic Realism, and John Gumperz and Interactional Sociolinguistics - and focuses on such questions as: Where is language located? How is an utterance-based approach to linguistics different from a sentence-based approach? How do metatheoretical paradigm assumptions such as realism or relativism affect the development of linguistic theory? What interesting developments in linguistic theory and analysis have sociolinguistics provided?

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

      • 1st Edition
      • May 23, 2014
      • R. Harris + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      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.

    • Linguistic Theory in America

      • 2nd Edition
      • June 28, 2014
      • Frederick J. Newmeyer
      • English
      • eBook
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      Linguistic Theory in America, Second Edition focuses on the origin and development of the theory of transformational generative grammar. The book first elaborates on the state of American linguistics in the mid-1950s, the Chomskyan revolution, and the movement from syntactic structures to the aspects of the theory of syntax. Discussions focus on the incorporation of semantics into the model, revisions in the syntactic component, generative phonology, impact of generative grammar on other fields, syntactic structures, and structural linguistics. The text then takes a look at the rise of generative semantics and linguistic wars. Topics include late generative semantics, collapse and legacy of generative semantics, steps to generative semantics, and emerging opposition to generative semantics. The manuscript elaborates on the extended standard theory and approaches to syntax, including generalized phrase structure grammar, constraints on transformational rules, and constraints on surface structure and base rules. The text is a dependable source of data for researchers interested in the theory of transformational generative grammar.

    • Dialect and Language Variation

      • 1st Edition
      • June 28, 2014
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      This anthology emphasizes dialects of American English and language variation in America. The editors present original essays by today's leading investigators, including articles by some of Europe's best dialectologists, obtained expressly for this work.

    • Dialects of the Yiddish Language

      • 1st Edition
      • June 28, 2014
      • D. Katz
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
        9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 9 9 5 0 1
      Modern research on dialects of the Yiddish language focuses in many instances upon Western Yiddish and the application of Yiddish dialectology to the study of older Yiddish and non-Yiddish monuments. The Second Oxford Winter Symposium on Yiddish Language and Literature reflects this trend and this collection of papers from the conference explores a wide range of contemporary research in the field.

    • The Emergence of Symbols

      • 1st Edition
      • May 10, 2014
      • Elizabeth Bates
      • E. A. Hammel
      • English
      • Paperback
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      • eBook
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      The Emergence of Symbols: Cognition and Communication in Infancy provides information pertinent to the nature and origin of symbols, the interdependence of language and thought, and the parallels between phylogeny and ontogeny. This book clarifies some of the conceptual and methodological issues involved in the search for prerequisites to language. Organized into seven chapters, this book begins with an overview of the distinction between homology and analogy in the study of linguistic and nonlinguistic developments. This text then explains the conceptual and operational definitions for such controversial terms as intention, convention, and symbolic behavior. Other chapters consider the limits and advantages of the correlational method as applied in the research. This book discusses as well the structure and content of early symbol use, both in language and in play. The final chapter examines the processes that underlie imitation and tool use, as they contribute to the child's analysis of his culture. This book is a valuable resource for neural biologists, psychologists, and social scientists.

    • Studies in Lexical Phonology

      • 1st Edition
      • Volume 4
      • May 19, 2014
      • Sharon Hargus + 1 more
      • English
      • Paperback
        9 7 8 0 1 2 3 2 5 0 7 1 1
      • eBook
        9 7 8 1 4 8 3 2 9 6 1 7 3
      Phonetics and Phonology, Volume 4: Studies in Lexical Phonology focuses on studies done on lexical phonology, including methods, techniques, and approaches involved in the field. The selection first underscores the simultaneity of morphological and prosodic structure, modeling the phonology-morphology interface, and deriving cyclicity. Discussions focus on affixation and cyclicity in prosodic lexical phonology, prosodic lexical phonology, theories of phonology-morphology interaction, phonology preceding morphology, and evidence for simultaneity. The book then examines interaction between modules in lexical phonology and the structure of the slave (Northern Athabaskan) verb. The book ponders on word level, structure preservation and postlexical tonology in Dagbani, and (post) lexical rule application. Topics include context-sensitivity in underspecification, postlexical and lexical tonology, word cycle, and English allophonic rules. The manuscript also tackles rule domains and phonological change, rule reordering and rule generalization in lexical phonology, and blocking in nonderived environments. The selection is a valuable reference for researchers interested in lexical phonology.