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Books in Social sciences and humanities

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    • 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.

    • The Special Status of Coronals: Internal and External Evidence

      Phonetics and Phonology, Vol. 2
      • 1st Edition
      • Carole Paradis + 1 more
      • English
      Phonetics and Phonology, Volume 2: The Special Status of Coronals: Internal and External Evidence contains a phonetic survey of coronal articulations and discusses many aspects of the phonological behavior of coronals as opposed to noncoronals. This book discusses the asymmetry and visibility in consonant articulations, coronal places of articulation, and underspecification of coronals in English. The cluster condition in Attic Greek, palatalization and representation of coronal, and relationship between laterality and coronality are also elaborated. This publication likewise covers the cross-linguistic survey of consonant harmony, coronals in child phonology, and coronal transparency in vowel spreading. This volume is intended for graduate students and scholars interested in phonology, phonetics, general linguistics, psycholinguistics, or language pathology.

    • Exemplar-Based Knowledge Acquisition

      A Unified Approach to Concept Representation, Classification, and Learning
      • 1st Edition
      • Ray Bareiss
      • B. Chandrasekaran
      • English
      Exemplar-Based Knowledge Acquisition: A Unified Approach to Concept Representation, Classification, and Learning covers the fundamental issues in cognitive science and the technology for solving real problems. This text contains six chapters and begins with a description of the rationale for the design of Protos Approach, its construction and performance. The succeeding chapters discuss how the Protos approach meets the requirements of representing concepts, using them for classification, and acquiring them from available training. These chapters also deal with the design and implementation of Protos. These topics are followed by a presentation of examples of the application of Protos to audiology and evaluate its performance. The final chapters survey related work in the areas of case-based reasoning and automated knowledge acquisition and the contributions of Protos approach. This book will be of great value to psychologists, psychiatrists, and researchers in the field of artificial intelligence.

    • Introductory Microeconomics

      • 1st Edition
      • Michael Veseth
      • English
      Introductory Microeconomics explains the basic principles of microeconomics, producer and consumer choices, resource markets, and government policies. The book describes the economics of exchange, such as the role of economic growth, factors that determine the amount and types of exchange, the supply and demand model of market operations, price setting, price changes, and the impact of one market on other markets. The text also explains market failures in terms of free market choice, externalities of failures, monopolies, as well as scarcity and choices leading to poverty. When economic policies are considered by the state, there are trade-offs that are necessary in the exchange. Before the government should make decisions, it always has to consider two opportunity costs, namely, 1) budget constraints, and 2) the opportunity cost of the funds spent in the private sector. For example (no. 1), if more money is spent on transfer payments, less will be left for education, national defense, infrastructure. Another example (no. 2) is when the government collects taxes, a direct loss in real income and utility among consumers will result. The book also presents real world economics in terms of the social security tax in the United States. The book can prove valuable for students of economics or business, sociologists, general readers interested in real-world economics, and policy makers involved in national economic development.

    • Understanding Language

      An Information-Processing Analysis of Speech Perception, Reading, and Psycholinguistics
      • 1st Edition
      • Dominic W. Massaro
      • English
      Understanding Language: An Information-Processi... Analysis of Speech Perception, Reading, and Psycholinguistics focuses on the progress of approaches, principles, and practices involved in speech perception, reading, and psycholinguistics. The selection first offers information on language and information processing, articulatory and acoustic characteristics of speech sounds, and acoustic features in speech perception. Discussions focus on vowel and consonant recognition, production of speech sounds, general acoustic properties and occurrence of speech sounds, vowel phonemes of English, and information, auditory, and visual information processing. The text then examines preperceptual images, processing time, and perceptual units in speech perception, theories of perception, and visual features, preperceptual storage, and processing time in reading. Topics include processing time, visual features, summary of information-processi... analysis of speech perception, role of linguistic structure in model building, and preperceptual images and processing time. The manuscript takes a look at an analysis of psychological studies of grammar, word and phrase recognition in speech processing, and linguistic theory and information processing, including psychological function of certain transformation rules, psychological reality of constituent structure, and linguistics and psychology. The selection is a vital source of data for researchers interested in speech perception, reading, and psycholinguistics.

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