What are (Un)Acceptability and (Un)Grammaticality? How do They Relate to One Another and to Interpretation?

What are (Un)Acceptability and (Un)Grammaticality? How do They Relate to One Another and to Interpretation? PDF Author: Susagna Tubau
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889663744
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description

What are (Un)Acceptability and (Un)Grammaticality? How do They Relate to One Another and to Interpretation?

What are (Un)Acceptability and (Un)Grammaticality? How do They Relate to One Another and to Interpretation? PDF Author: Susagna Tubau
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889663744
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description


Pragmatics and Semantics

Pragmatics and Semantics PDF Author: Carol A. Kates
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501752189
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
What is the nature of communicative competence? Carol Kates addresses this crucial linguistic question, examining and finally rejecting the rationalistic theory proposed by Noam Chomsky and elaborated by Jerrold J. Katz, among others. She sets forth three reasons why the rationalistic model shoudl be rejected: (1) it has not been supported by empirical tests; (2) it cannot accommodate the pragmatic relation between speaker and sign; and (3) the theory of universal grammar carries with it unacceptable metaphysical implications unless it is interpreted in light of empiricism. Kates proposes an empiricist model in place of the rationalistic theory—a model that, in her view, is more consistent with recent findings in linguistics and psycholinguistics. In attempting to clarify the nature of utterance meaning, Kates develops theoretical perspectives on phenomenological empiricism and produces an account of reference and intentionality directly relevant to empiricaly based theories of speaking and understanding. Among the major topics addressed in the book are transformational-generative and universal grammer, cognitive theories of language acquisition, pragmatic structure, predication and topic-comment structure, and empiricism and the philosophical problem of universals. An innovative and probing work, Pragmatics and Semantics will be welcomed by philosophers, linguists, and psycholinguists.

The empirical base of linguistics

The empirical base of linguistics PDF Author: Carson T. Schütze
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 394623402X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Throughout much of the history of linguistics, grammaticality judgments - intuitions about the well-formedness of sentences - have constituted most of the empirical base against which theoretical hypothesis have been tested. Although such judgments often rest on subtle intuitions, there is no systematic methodology for eliciting them, and their apparent instability and unreliability have led many to conclude that they should be abandoned as a source of data. Carson T. Schütze presents here a detailed critical overview of the vast literature on the nature and utility of grammaticality judgments and other linguistic intuitions, and the ways they have been used in linguistic research. He shows how variation in the judgment process can arise from factors such as biological, cognitive, and social differences among subjects, the particular elicitation method used, and extraneous features of the materials being judged. He then assesses the status of judgments as reliable indicators of a speaker's grammar. Integrating substantive and methodological findings, Schütze proposes a model in which grammaticality judgments result from interaction of linguistic competence with general cognitive processes. He argues that this model provides the underpinning for empirical arguments to show that once extragrammatical variance is factored out, universal grammar succumbs to a simpler, more elegant analysis than judgment data initially lead us to expect. Finally, Schütze offers numerous practical suggestions on how to collect better and more useful data. The result is a work of vital importance that will be required reading for linguists, cognitive psychologists, and philosophers of language alike.

Pragmatics at its Interfaces

Pragmatics at its Interfaces PDF Author: Stavros Assimakopoulos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501505025
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
All of the papers included in this volume offer some novel and/or updated perspective on issues of central importance in pragmatics, suggesting original ways in which research in the particular areas they adhere to could advance. Apart from the obvious aim of motivating further discussion on the topics it touches on, a central objective of this volume is to underline that research in pragmatics can and does substantially inform research in numerous other fields of enquiry, namely philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics and conversation analysis, revealing in this way the truly interdisciplinary nature of pragmatics theorizing. In this respect, and given that most of the contributions in this volume are from leading scholars in their respective fields, it is clearly expected that the ideas put forth in this volume will have a profound and long-lasting impact for future research in the area.

Language, Memory, and Thought

Language, Memory, and Thought PDF Author: John R. Anderson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1134918828
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 559

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Book Description
Published in 1976, Language, Memory, and thought is a valuable contribution to the field of Cognitive Psychology. This book presents a theory about human cognitive functioning, a set of experiments testing that theory, and a review of some of the literature relevant to the theory. The theory is embodied in a computer simulation model called ACT.

The On-line Study of Sentence Comprehension

The On-line Study of Sentence Comprehension PDF Author: Manuel Carreiras
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1135423946
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Addresses issues relating to the use of advanced research techniques - specifically Eyetracking and ERP - to study the moment-by-moment mental processes that occur while a reader or listener is understanding language.

The Semantics of Generics in Dutch and Related Languages

The Semantics of Generics in Dutch and Related Languages PDF Author: Albert Oosterhof
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027255051
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This monograph is a comprehensive study of the various ways in which genericity can be expressed in Dutch, dialects of Dutch, and languages related to Dutch. On the basis of empirical (corpus- and questionnaire-based) data, a wide range of topics are discussed which have been addressed in the literature on the semantics and pragmatics of generics. The empirical data presented in this book shed new light on issues crucial to the study of genericity. A number of widely accepted ideas are shown to be problematic. For example, arguments are presented against the well-known claim that progressive forms typically exclude characterizing interpretations. Furthermore, the author shows that speakers do not agree in their judgements of the acceptability of bare plurals (as well as other noun phrase types) in generic contexts. Such data are a problem for the influential thesis that bare plurals refer to kinds unambiguously.

The Merge Hypothesis

The Merge Hypothesis PDF Author: Norbert Hornstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009415743
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Outlines a theory which centers a principle that requires all grammatical dependencies to be Merge mediated.

Approaches to Language: Data, Theory, and Explanation

Approaches to Language: Data, Theory, and Explanation PDF Author: Ángel J. Gallego
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889636682
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The study of language has changed substantially in the last decades. In particular, the development of new technologies has allowed the emergence of new experimental techniques which complement more traditional approaches to data in linguistics (like informal reports of native speakers’ judgments, surveys, corpus studies, or fieldwork). This move is an enriching feature of contemporary linguistics, allowing for a better understanding of a phenomenon as complex as natural language, where all sorts of factors (internal and external to the individual) interact (Chomsky 2005). This has generated some sort of divergence not only in research approaches, but also in the phenomena studied, with an increasing specialization between subfields and accounts. At the same time, it has also led to subfield isolation and methodological a priori, with some researchers even claiming that theoretical linguistics has little to offer to cognitive science (see for instance Edelman & Christiansen 2003). We believe that this view of linguistics (and cognitive science as a whole) is misguided, and that the complementarity of different approaches to such a multidimensional phenomenon as language should be highlighted for convergence and further development of its scientific study (see also Jackendoff 1988, 2007; Phillips & Lasnik 2003; den Dikken, Bernstein, Tortora & Zanuttini 2007; Sprouse, Schütze & Almeida 2013; Phillips 2013).

Interpreted Languages and Compositionality

Interpreted Languages and Compositionality PDF Author: Marcus Kracht
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400721080
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This book argues that languages are composed of sets of ‘signs’, rather than ‘strings’. This notion, first posited by de Saussure in the early 20th century, has for decades been neglected by linguists, particularly following Chomsky’s heavy critiques of the 1950s. Yet since the emergence of formal semantics in the 1970s, the issue of compositionality has gained traction in the theoretical debate, becoming a selling point for linguistic theories. Yet the concept of ‘compositionality’ itself remains ill-defined, an issue this book addresses. Positioning compositionality as a cornerstone in linguistic theory, it argues that, contrary to widely held beliefs, there exist non-compositional languages, which shows that the concept of compositionality has empirical content. The author asserts that the existence of syntactic structure can flow from the fact that a compositional grammar cannot be delivered without prior agreement on the syntactic structure of the constituents.