Semantic Structures (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Semantic Structures (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: David L. Waltz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933494
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Natural language understanding is central to the goals of artificial intelligence. Any truly intelligent machine must be capable of carrying on a conversation: dialogue, particularly clarification dialogue, is essential if we are to avoid disasters caused by the misunderstanding of the intelligent interactive systems of the future. This book is an interim report on the grand enterprise of devising a machine that can use natural language as fluently as a human. What has really been achieved since this goal was first formulated in Turing’s famous test? What obstacles still need to be overcome?

Semantic Structures (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Semantic Structures (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: David L. Waltz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933494
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book

Book Description
Natural language understanding is central to the goals of artificial intelligence. Any truly intelligent machine must be capable of carrying on a conversation: dialogue, particularly clarification dialogue, is essential if we are to avoid disasters caused by the misunderstanding of the intelligent interactive systems of the future. This book is an interim report on the grand enterprise of devising a machine that can use natural language as fluently as a human. What has really been achieved since this goal was first formulated in Turing’s famous test? What obstacles still need to be overcome?

Production and Comprehension of Utterances (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Production and Comprehension of Utterances (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: I.M. Schlesinger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933532
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In this volume, the author reviews the results of research on language performance and proposes a model of production and comprehension. Although recent developments in linguistics are taken into account, consideration of other requirements of a performance model leads to the conclusion that the grammar the speaker has in mind differs from the grammar as currently conceived of by most linguists. The author is also critical of recent computer simulations of language performance on the basis that they fall short of describing what goes on in human production and comprehension. The author therefore proposes that the basic issues must be rethought and new theoretical foundations reformulated, in order to arrive at a viable theory of language functioning. In developing the framework of the model presented in this book, requirements of flexibility in the performance mechanisms, the probabilistic nature of comprehension processes, and the interleaving of linguistic rules with context and knowledge of the world are emphasized.

Categorial Grammars (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Categorial Grammars (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Mary McGee Wood
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933761
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
In the last few years categorial grammars have been the focus of dramatically expanded interest and activity, both theoretical and computational. This book, the first introduction to categorical grammars, is written as an objective critical assessment. Categorial grammars offer a radical alternative to the phrase-structure paradigm, with deep roots in the philosophy of language, logic and algebra. Mary McGee Wood outlines their historical evolution and discusses their formal basis, starting with a quasi-canonical core and considering a number of possible extensions. She also explores their treatment of a number of linguistic phenomena, including passives, raising, discontinuous dependencies and non-constituent coordination, as well as such general issues as word order, logic, psychological plausibility and parsing. This introduction to categorial grammars will be of interest to final year undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in current theories of grammar, including comparative, descriptive, and computational linguistics.

The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

The Semantics of Determiners (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Johan Van Der Auwera
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131793346X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This book is a collection of linguistic and philosophical papers dealing with the semantic problems of determiners. The language under investigation is mostly English, although a few papers deal with French and German, and, to a lesser extent, with Dutch, Polish, Russian and Hebrew. The majority of the contributions focus on the semantics of the definite and indefinite articles, leading into discussions of anaphoricness, specificness, opacity and transparency, referentiality and attributiveness and genericness. The relation of the determiners to other parts of grammar, in particular relativisation and predication, is also investigated. Some attention is also given to quantifiers. In the spirit of pluralism, there is no single paradigm unifying all the papers, rather, the volume reflects elements of the Extended Standard Theory, Generative Semantics, Montague Grammar, (Gricean) Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory.

Categorial Morphology (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Categorial Morphology (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Jack Hoeksema
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933745
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book presents an account of certain problems of morphological analysis that occurs within a theoretical framework that derives its inspiration from recent studies of the lexicon in generative grammar. The starting point is the controversy about the proper analysis of synthetic compounds. Are they really compounds, or phrasal derivations, or do they constitute a type of word formation of their own?

Basic Word Order (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Basic Word Order (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Russell S Tomlin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933796
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This book examines the frequencies of the six possible basic word (or constituent) orders (SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OSV, OVS) provides a typologically grounded explanation for those frequencies in terms of three independent, functional principles of linguistic organization. From a database of nearly 1,000 languages and their basic constituent orders, a sample of 400 languages was produced that is statistically representative of both the genetic and areal distributions of the world’s languages. This sample reveals the following relative frequencies (in order from high to low) of basic constituent order types: (1) SOV and SVO, (2) VSO, (3) VOS and OVS, (4) OSV. It is argued that these relative frequencies can be explained to be the result of the possible interactions of three fundamental functional principles of linguistic organization. Principle 1, the thematic information principle, specifies that initial position is the cross-linguistically favoured position for clause-level thematic information. Principle 2, the verb-object bonding principle, describes the cross-linguistic tendency for a transitive verb and its object to form a more tightly integrated unit, syntactically and semantically, than does a transitive verb and its subject. Principle 3, the animated principle, describes the cross-linguistic tendency for semantic arguments which are either more animate or more agentive to occur earlier in the clause. Each principle is motivated independently of the others, drawing on cross-linguistic data from more than 80 genetically and typologically diverse languages. Given these three independently motivated functional principles, it is argued that the relative frequency of basic constituent order types is due to the tendency for the three principles to be maximally realized in the world’s languages. SOV and SVO languages are typologically most frequent because such basic orders reflect all three principles. The remaining orders occur less frequently because they reflect fewer of the principles. The 1,000-language database and the genetic and areal classification frames are published as appendices to the volume.

The Formal Grammar of Switch-Reference (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

The Formal Grammar of Switch-Reference (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Daniel L Finer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933672
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
This book studies the syntax of switch-reference and its implications for the theory of grammar. Switch-reference, found in many genetically and geographically diverse languages, is a phenomenon whereby referential identity between subjects of hierarchically adjacent clauses is encoded by the presence of a morpheme, usually suffixed to the verb of the subordinate clause. This book argues that switch-reference should be analysed as a syntactic rather than a purely pragmatic or functional feature of language.

The Foundations of Linguistic Theory (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

The Foundations of Linguistic Theory (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Nigel Love
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933648
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
For Roy Harris, the fundamental problem about linguistics is that it has been led astray by the fact that we are capable intellectually of ‘decontextualising’ our own verbal behaviour. A whole interlocking system of doctrines about forms, meanings and communication has arisen designed to support the idea that one particular kind of decontextualising analysis is a prerequisite for, rather than a retrospective reflection on, that behaviour. Against this, in 13 essays collected here for the first time, Harris argues for a fresh start, which recognises that we create language ‘as we go’, both as individuals and as communities, just as we create our social structures, forms of artistic expression, moral values, and everything else we call civilisation. If Harris’s thought can be put in a nutshell, it is that all utterances (whether written or spoken) have to appear in a context, and that context is an integral part of the utterance. There is no such thing as a contextless utterance.

A Situated Theory of Agreement (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

A Situated Theory of Agreement (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Michael Barlow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933435
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Typical cases of agreement are easy to identify, but where the boundaries of agreement lie depend on what aspects of the agreement relation are considered to be defining properties. It is a short step from viewing agreement in the traditional way, as a matching of features, to defining agreement as any relation that ensures consistency of information in two separate structures. This book takes as its topic agreement as it is traditionally conceived, one that only involves morphosyntactic categories.

Semantic Structures

Semantic Structures PDF Author: Ray S. Jackendoff
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262600200
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Semantic Structures is a large-scale study of conceptual structure and its lexical and syntactic expression in English that builds on the system of Conceptual Semantics described in Ray Jackendoff's earlier books Semantics and Cognition and Consciousness and the Computational Mind. Jackendoff summarizes the relevant arguments in his two previous books, setting out the basic parameters for the formalization of meaning, and comparing his mentalistic approach with Fodor's Language of Thought hypothesis. He then takes up the Problem of Meaning, extending the range of semantic fields encompassed by the Conceptual Semantics formalism, and the Problem of Correspondence, formalizing the relation between semantic and syntactic structure. Both of these problems must be fully addressed in order to develop a general theory of language that is concerned with syntax and semantics and their points of connection. Few books on lexical semantics present such a comprehensive analysis of such a wide range of phenomena from a unified perspective. Besides discussing the conceptual structures of hundreds of words and constructions, Jackendoff extends and deepens the theory to come to grips with such crucial issues as roles and marking; arguments, modifiers, and adjuncts; binding and control; and the thematic linking hierarchy.