Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262523295
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind. According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways. This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.
How Children Learn the Meanings of Words
Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262523295
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind. According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways. This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262523295
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind. According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways. This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.
Where Words Get their Meaning
Author: Marianna Bolognesi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260427
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning? This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to extra-linguistic contexts. By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260427
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning? This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to extra-linguistic contexts. By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience.
Oxford English Dictionary
Author: John A. Simpson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195218893
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The Oxford English Dictionary is the internationally recognized authority on the evolution of the English language from 1150 to the present day. The Dictionary defines over 500,000 words, making it an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, pronunciation, and history of the English language. This new upgrade version of The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM offers unparalleled access to the world's most important reference work for the English language. The text of this version has been augmented with the inclusion of the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series (Volumes 1-3), published in 1993 and 1997, the Bibliography to the Second Edition, and other ancillary material. System requirements: PC with minimum 200 MHz Pentium-class processor; 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended); 16-speed CD-ROM drive (32-speed recommended); Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 200, or XP (Local administrator rights are required to install and open the OED for the first time on a PC running Windows NT 4 and to install and run the OED on Windows 2000 and XP); 1.1 GB hard disk space to run the OED from the CD-ROM and 1.7 GB to install the CD-ROM to the hard disk: SVGA monitor: 800 x 600 pixels: 16-bit (64k, high color) setting recommended. Please note: for the upgrade, installation requires the use of the OED CD-ROM v2.0.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195218893
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The Oxford English Dictionary is the internationally recognized authority on the evolution of the English language from 1150 to the present day. The Dictionary defines over 500,000 words, making it an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, pronunciation, and history of the English language. This new upgrade version of The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM offers unparalleled access to the world's most important reference work for the English language. The text of this version has been augmented with the inclusion of the Oxford English Dictionary Additions Series (Volumes 1-3), published in 1993 and 1997, the Bibliography to the Second Edition, and other ancillary material. System requirements: PC with minimum 200 MHz Pentium-class processor; 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended); 16-speed CD-ROM drive (32-speed recommended); Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 200, or XP (Local administrator rights are required to install and open the OED for the first time on a PC running Windows NT 4 and to install and run the OED on Windows 2000 and XP); 1.1 GB hard disk space to run the OED from the CD-ROM and 1.7 GB to install the CD-ROM to the hard disk: SVGA monitor: 800 x 600 pixels: 16-bit (64k, high color) setting recommended. Please note: for the upgrade, installation requires the use of the OED CD-ROM v2.0.
Words, Meaning and Vocabulary
Author: Howard Jackson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780826460967
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
This work goes back to the sources of modern English words and studies the development of vocabulary over time. It examines what constitutes a word, with a discussion of words that look and sound the same, words that have several meanings, and "words" that are made up of more than one "word". As well as considering the borrowing of words from other languages throughout the history of English as a means of increasing the vocabulary, the book also outlines how English forms new words by exploiting the structure of existing words, through processes of derivation and compounding. The meaning of a word is composite of a number of relations: reference to external context, relations with other words of a similar or opposite meaning, collocational relations, and so on. The book grapples with the meaning problem, but then goes on to look at the contexts in which words are used and the purposes for which they are used, raising the question whether it is more sensible to talk about English "vocabularies" rather than English "vocabulary".
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780826460967
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
This work goes back to the sources of modern English words and studies the development of vocabulary over time. It examines what constitutes a word, with a discussion of words that look and sound the same, words that have several meanings, and "words" that are made up of more than one "word". As well as considering the borrowing of words from other languages throughout the history of English as a means of increasing the vocabulary, the book also outlines how English forms new words by exploiting the structure of existing words, through processes of derivation and compounding. The meaning of a word is composite of a number of relations: reference to external context, relations with other words of a similar or opposite meaning, collocational relations, and so on. The book grapples with the meaning problem, but then goes on to look at the contexts in which words are used and the purposes for which they are used, raising the question whether it is more sensible to talk about English "vocabularies" rather than English "vocabulary".
Words and Their Meaning
Author: Howard Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317887573
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
In this book, the development of the English dictionary is examined, along with the kinds of dictionary available, the range of information they contain, factors affecting their usage, and public attitudes towards them. As well as an descriptive analysis of word meaning, the author considers whether a thematic, thesaurus-like presentation might be more suited than the traditional alphabetical format to the description of words and their meaning.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317887573
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
In this book, the development of the English dictionary is examined, along with the kinds of dictionary available, the range of information they contain, factors affecting their usage, and public attitudes towards them. As well as an descriptive analysis of word meaning, the author considers whether a thematic, thesaurus-like presentation might be more suited than the traditional alphabetical format to the description of words and their meaning.
What's the Point?
Author: Josefine A. Fowler
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1449059678
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26
Book Description
What's The Point? was written to bring to light the many words in the English language that cause some problems for young readers and writers. It's written in rhyme with a humorous tone to stimulate interest and retention.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1449059678
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 26
Book Description
What's The Point? was written to bring to light the many words in the English language that cause some problems for young readers and writers. It's written in rhyme with a humorous tone to stimulate interest and retention.
Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
Author: Random House (Firm)
Publisher: Random House Reference
ISBN: 9780375720260
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 2230
Book Description
Provides entries for over 315,000 words and phrases, and includes a list of new words.
Publisher: Random House Reference
ISBN: 9780375720260
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 2230
Book Description
Provides entries for over 315,000 words and phrases, and includes a list of new words.
Semantic Antics
Author: Sol Steinmetz
Publisher: Random House Reference
ISBN: 030749778X
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
"My favorite popular word book of the year" -William Safire, NY Times 6/22/2008 A fun, new approach to examining etymology! Many common English words started out with an entirely different meaning than the one we know today. For example: The word adamant came into English around 855 C.E. as a synonym for 'diamond,' very different from today's meaning of the word: "utterly unyielding in attitude or opinion." Before the year 1200, the word silly meant "blessed," and was derived from Old English saelig, meaning "happy." This word went through several incarnations before adopting today's meaning: "stupid or foolish." In Semantic Antics, lexicographer Sol Steinmetz takes readers on an in-depth, fascinating journey to learn how hundreds of words have evolved from their first meaning to the meanings used today.
Publisher: Random House Reference
ISBN: 030749778X
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
"My favorite popular word book of the year" -William Safire, NY Times 6/22/2008 A fun, new approach to examining etymology! Many common English words started out with an entirely different meaning than the one we know today. For example: The word adamant came into English around 855 C.E. as a synonym for 'diamond,' very different from today's meaning of the word: "utterly unyielding in attitude or opinion." Before the year 1200, the word silly meant "blessed," and was derived from Old English saelig, meaning "happy." This word went through several incarnations before adopting today's meaning: "stupid or foolish." In Semantic Antics, lexicographer Sol Steinmetz takes readers on an in-depth, fascinating journey to learn how hundreds of words have evolved from their first meaning to the meanings used today.
Lexical Meaning in Context
Author: Nicholas Asher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139501313
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
This is a book about the meanings of words and how they can combine to form larger meaningful units, as well as how they can fail to combine when the amalgamation of a predicate and argument would produce what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a 'category mistake'. It argues for a theory in which words get assigned both an intension and a type. The book develops a rich system of types and investigates its philosophical and formal implications, for example the abandonment of the classic Church analysis of types that has been used by linguists since Montague. The author integrates fascinating and puzzling observations about lexical meaning into a compositional semantic framework. Adjustments in types are a feature of the compositional process and account for various phenomena including coercion and copredication. This book will be of interest to semanticists, philosophers, logicians and computer scientists alike.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139501313
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
This is a book about the meanings of words and how they can combine to form larger meaningful units, as well as how they can fail to combine when the amalgamation of a predicate and argument would produce what the philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a 'category mistake'. It argues for a theory in which words get assigned both an intension and a type. The book develops a rich system of types and investigates its philosophical and formal implications, for example the abandonment of the classic Church analysis of types that has been used by linguists since Montague. The author integrates fascinating and puzzling observations about lexical meaning into a compositional semantic framework. Adjustments in types are a feature of the compositional process and account for various phenomena including coercion and copredication. This book will be of interest to semanticists, philosophers, logicians and computer scientists alike.
Words Without Meaning
Author: Christopher Gauker
Publisher: Christopher Gauker
ISBN: 0262072424
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
A critique of, and alternative to, the received view of linguistic communication.
Publisher: Christopher Gauker
ISBN: 0262072424
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
A critique of, and alternative to, the received view of linguistic communication.