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Author: S. K. Leung
Publisher: Janus Publishing Company Lim
ISBN: 9781902835136
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Against the popular belief that language and meaning are essentially public in their epistemological origin, this book offers a philosophical basis for its antithesis. The author refutes the separation of reference from meaning, the long-held logical principle of the identity of the indiscernibles, and Wittgenstein's no-private-language philosophy.
Author: S. K. Leung
Publisher: Janus Publishing Company Lim
ISBN: 9781902835136
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Get Book Here
Book Description
Against the popular belief that language and meaning are essentially public in their epistemological origin, this book offers a philosophical basis for its antithesis. The author refutes the separation of reference from meaning, the long-held logical principle of the identity of the indiscernibles, and Wittgenstein's no-private-language philosophy.
Author: Charles Taylor
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674970276
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
“We have been given a powerful and often uplifting vision of what it is to be truly human.” —John Cottingham, The Tablet In seminal works ranging from Sources of the Self to A Secular Age, Charles Taylor has shown how we create possible ways of being, both as individuals and as a society. In his new book setting forth decades of thought, he demonstrates that language is at the center of this generative process. For centuries, philosophers have been divided on the nature of language. Those in the rational empiricist tradition—Hobbes, Locke, Condillac, and their heirs—assert that language is a tool that human beings developed to encode and communicate information. In The Language Animal, Taylor explains that this view neglects the crucial role language plays in shaping the very thought it purports to express. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning and fundamentally shapes human experience. The human linguistic capacity is not something we innately possess. We first learn language from others, and, inducted into the shared practice of speech, our individual selves emerge out of the conversation. Taylor expands the thinking of the German Romantics Hamann, Herder, and Humboldt into a theory of linguistic holism. Language is intellectual, but it is also enacted in artistic portrayals, gestures, tones of voice, metaphors, and the shifts of emphasis and attitude that accompany speech. Human language recognizes no boundary between mind and body. In illuminating the full capacity of “the language animal,” Taylor sheds light on the very question of what it is to be a human being.
Author: Paul R. Kroeger
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961101361
Category : Context (Linguistics)
Languages : en
Pages : 502
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Book Description
This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect. Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered. As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.
Author: Edward Sapir
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language and languages
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Professor Sapir analyzes, for student and common reader, the elements of language. Among these are the units of language, grammatical concepts and their origins, how languages differ and resemble each other, and the history of the growth of representative languages--Cover.
Author: Hugh Chisholm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Languages : en
Pages : 1090
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Book Description
This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.
Author: Anita K. Barry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313013616
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Language issues are intrinsically part of every classroom setting. Therefore, there is a need to present the linguistic perspective to all teachers and teachers-in-training. This perspective assumes that a complex system is learned by children at an early age with little conscious instruction. It recognizes that languages change over time and that variation, based on region, ethnic identity, gender, social class, and social context, is inherent to language. Focusing more on the practical than the theoretical, Barry aims to engage teachers and education students in discussion of the relevance of linguistics to teaching and to encourage them to bring their own expertise to the discussion. Based on the research of scholars in linguistics and related disciplines, Barry's volume helps teachers synthesize some of the foundations of classic linguistic study with important, current findings. She starts by acquainting the reader with fundamentals of linguistics, then she moves on to discussions of teaching grammar and the history of English orthography. An entire chapter is devoted to the process of child language acquisition and another to the obstacles that some people face when attempting to learn a language. The work concludes with pieces on language policies and language literacy. Group exercises and suggested projects are included to facilitate the exchange between linguistics and education. The book is a must for those interested in the fundamental role of language in education.
Author: Alan K. Melby
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027283575
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
This book is about the limits of machine translation. It is widely recognized that machine translation systems do much better on domain-specific controlled-language texts (domain texts for short) than on dynamic general-language texts (general texts for short). The authors explore this general — domain distinction and come to some uncommon conclusions about the nature of language. Domain language is claimed to be made possible by general language, while general language is claimed to be made possible by the ethical dimensions of relationships. Domain language is unharmed by the constraints of objectivism, while general language is suffocated by those constraints. Along the way to these conclusions, visits are made to Descartes and Saussure, to Chomsky and Lakoff, to Wittgenstein and Levinas. From these conclusions, consequences are drawn for machine translation and translator tools, for linguistic theory and translation theory. The title of the book does not question whether language is possible; it asks, with wonder and awe, why communication through language is possible.
Author: Philippe Schlenker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262047438
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 488
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Book Description
How meaning works—from monkey calls to human language, from spoken language to sign language, from gestures to music—and how meaning is connected to truth. We communicate through language, connecting what we mean to the words we say. But humans convey meaning in other ways as well, with facial expressions, hand gestures, and other methods. Animals, too, can get their meanings across without words. In What It All Means, linguist Philippe Schlenker explains how meaning works, from monkey calls to human language, from spoken language to sign language, from gestures to music. He shows that these extraordinarily diverse types of meaning can be studied and compared within a unified approach—one in which the notion of truth plays a central role. “It’s just semantics” is often said dismissively. But Schlenker shows that semantics—the study of meaning—is an unsung success of modern linguistics, a way to investigate some of the deepest questions about human nature using tools from the empirical and formal sciences. Drawing on fifty years of research in formal semantics, Schlenker traces how meaning comes to life. After investigating meaning in primate communication, he explores how human meanings are built, using in some cases sign languages as a guide to the workings of our inner “logic machine.” Schlenker explores how these meanings can be enriched by iconicity in sign language and by gestures in spoken language, and then turns to more abstract forms of iconicity to understand the meaning of music. He concludes by examining paradoxes, which—being neither true nor false—test the very limits of meaning.
Author: Constance Scharff
Publisher: Frontiers E-books
ISBN: 2889191117
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 149
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Book Description
The evolution of human language has been discussed for centuries from different perspectives. Linguistic theory has proposed grammar as a core part of human language that has to be considered in this context. Recent advances in neurosciences have allowed us to take a new neurobiological look on the similarities and dissimilarities of cognitive capacities and their neural basis across both closely and distantly related species. A couple of decades ago the comparisons were mainly drawn between human and non-human primates, investigating the cytoarchitecture of particular brain areas and their structural connectivity. Moreover, comparative studies were conducted with respect to their ability to process grammars of different complexity. So far the available data suggest that non-human primates are able to learn simple probabilistic grammars, but not hierarchically structured complex grammars. The human brain, which easily learns both grammars, differs from the non-human brain (among others) in how two language-relevant brain regions (Broca’s area and superior temporal cortex) are connected structurally. Whether the more dominant dorsal pathway in humans compared to non-human primates is causally related to this behavioral difference is an issue of current debate. Ontogenetic findings suggest at least a correlation between the maturation of the dorsal pathway and the behavior to process syntactically complex structures, although a causal prove is still not available. Thus the neural basis of complex grammar processing in humans remains to be defined. More recently it has been reported that songbirds are also able to distinguish between sound sequences reflecting complex grammar. Interestingly, songbirds learn to sing by imitating adult song in a process not unlike language development in children. Moreover, the neural circuits supporting this behavior in songbirds bear anatomical and functional similarities to those in humans. In adult humans the fiber tract connecting the auditory cortex and motor cortex dorsally is known to be involved in the repetition of spoken language. This pathway is present already at birth and is taken to play a major role during language acquisition. In songbirds, detailed information exist concerning the interaction of auditory, motor and cortical-basal ganglia processing during song learning, and present a rich substrate for comparative studies. The scope of the Research Topic is to bring together contributions of researchers from different fields, who investigate grammar processing in humans, non-human primates and songbirds with the aim to find answers to the question of what constitutes the neurobiological basis of grammar learning. Open questions are: Which brain networks are relevant for grammar learning? Is there more than one dorsal pathway (one from temporal cortex to motor cortex and one to Broca’s area) and if so what are their functions? Has the ability to process sequences of a given hierarchical complexity evolved in different phylogenetic lines (birds, primates, other vocal production learners such as bats)? Is the presence of a sensory-to-motor circuit in humans a precondition for development of a dorsal pathway between the temporal cortex and Broca’s area? What role do subcortical structures (Basal Ganglia) play in vocal and grammar learning?
Author: K. Muischnek
Publisher: IOS Press
ISBN: 1614999120
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Computational linguistics, speech processing, natural language processing and language technologies in general have all become increasingly important in an era of all-pervading technological development. This book, Human Language Technologies – The Baltic Perspective, presents the proceedings of the 8th International Baltic Human Language Technologies Conference (Baltic HLT 2018), held in Tartu, Estonia, on 27-29 September 2018. The main aim of Baltic HLT is to provide a forum for sharing new ideas and recent advances in computational linguistics and related disciplines, and to promote cooperation between the research communities of the Baltic States and beyond. The 24 articles in this volume cover a wide range of subjects, including machine translation, automatic morphology, text classification, various language resources, and NLP pipelines, as well as speech technology; the latter being the most popular topic with 8 papers. Delivering an overview of the state-of-the-art language technologies from a Baltic perspective, the book will be of interest to all those whose work involves language processing in whatever form.
