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Books in Social sciences and humanities

  • 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.
  • Shawnee Minisink

    A Stratified Paleoindian–Archaic Site in the Upper Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania
    • 1st Edition
    • Charles W. McNett
    • English
    Studies in Archaeology: Shawnee Minisink: A Stratified Paleoindian-Archaic Site in the Upper Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania focuses on the excavation of the Shawnee Minisink and its connection with the lifestyles of the earliest inhabitants of North America. The selection first offers information on the Upper Delaware Valley Early Man Project, early history of archaeological research at the Shawnee Minisink Site, and methodology and research design at the Shawnee Minisink Site. Discussions focus on data recovery design, evaluation of methodology, research context, and goals. The text then examines the biophysical conditions of the Upper Delaware Valley; aboriginal subsistence and site ecology as interpreted from microfloral and faunal remains; and artifact morphology and chronology at the Shawnee Minisink Site. The book takes a look at myth, reality, and the Upper Delaware Valley, Paleoindian artifact form and function at Shawnee Minisink, and Paleoindian to early archaic transition at the Shawnee Minisink Site. Topics include environmental setting, lithic analysis results, secondary modifications, hafting, endscraper distributional pattern, analytic technique and procedure, and paleoecological reconstruction. The selection is a dependable reference for archeologists wanting to conduct further studies on the Shawnee Minisink Site.
  • The Emergence of Symbols

    Cognition and Communication in Infancy
    • 1st Edition
    • Elizabeth Bates
    • E. A. Hammel
    • English
    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.
  • Open Systems Handbook

    • 2nd Edition
    • Alan R. Simon + 1 more
    • English
    Open Systems Handbook, Second Edition provides an easy-to-read, thorough, and management-oriented explanation of the promises, dangers, and realities of open systems. This edition describes specific products and various open systems that have been updated to reflect the events of the mid-1990s. Emerging open technologies that either didn't exist in 1991 or were in their infancy, such as client/server middleware, are also covered. Topics include the definitions and history of open systems, open systems components, end user interaction points, and elements of open systems software. The general communications hardware, visual application development, models of integration, and advantages of open systems are likewise elaborated. This publication is a good reference for computing professionals and engineers working on open systems.
  • Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley

    • 1st Edition
    • Dan F. Morse + 1 more
    • James Bennett Griffin
    • English
    Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley describes an archeological reconstruction of the preceding 11,000 years of an extraordinarily rich environment centered within the largest river system north of the Amazon. This book focuses on the lowlands of the Mississippi Valley from just north of the Ohio River to the mouth of the Arkansas River. Organized into 13 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the territory between the Ohio and Arkansas rivers. This text then attempts to humanize the archeological interpretations by reference to social organization, settlement system, economy, religion, and politics. Other chapters focus on understanding the nature of change through time in the Central Mississippi Valley. This book discusses as well the difference between an old braided stream surface and the younger meander belt system. The final chapter deals with the investigation of prehistoric Indian remains. This book is a valuable resource for archeologists, zoologists, and scientific hobbyists.