Semantic Structures (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Semantic Structures (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: David L. Waltz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933508
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

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: 1317933508
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

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?

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: 1317933478
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

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.

Accessing Noun-Phrase Antecedents (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Accessing Noun-Phrase Antecedents (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Mira Ariel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933834
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
Accessing Noun-Phrase Antecedents offers a radical shift in the analysis of discourse anaphora, from a purely pragmatic account to a cognitive account, in terms of processing procedures. Mira Ariel defines referring expressions as markers signalling the degree of Accessibility in memory of the antecedent. The notion of Accessibility is explicitly defined, the crucial factors being the Salience of the antecedent, and the Unity between the antecedent and the anaphor. This analysis yields an astonishing array of new results. The precise distribution of referring expressions in actual discourse is directly predicted. Several universals of anaphoric relations are stated. Thus, although not all languages necessarily have the same markers, and nor do they assign them precisely the same function, Ariel shows that they all obey the same Accessibility marking hierarchy. This book will be compulsory reading for anyone with an interest in the semantics and pragmatics of referring expressions, in the interaction of semantics and pragmatics, and more generally in the interaction between peripheral and central cognitive systems.

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

Get Book Here

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 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

Get Book Here

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?

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

Get Book Here

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.

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

Get Book Here

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.

Basic Word Order (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Basic Word Order (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Russell S Tomlin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131793380X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Get Book Here

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.

Generative Grammar and Linguistic Competence (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Generative Grammar and Linguistic Competence (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: P.H. Matthews
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933621
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Get Book Here

Book Description
According to Chomsky, to learn a language is to develop a grammar for it – a generative grammar which assigns a definite structure and a definite meaning to each of a definite set of sentences. This forms the speaker’s linguistic competence, which represents a distinct faculty of the mind, called the faculty of language. This view has been widely criticised, from many separate angles and by many different authors, including some of Chomsky’s pupils. As one of the earliest and most persistent critics, Professor Matthews is especially well placed to tie these arguments together. He concludes that Chomsky’s notion of competence finds no support within linguistics. It can be defended, if at all, only by assuming a traditional philosophy of mind. The notion of grammar should therefore be restricted to descriptive linguistics, and should not have psychological interpretations foisted on it. Peter Matthews’ book covers a variety of topics, from morphology to speech acts, from word meaning to the study of language variation, and from blending in syntax to the relation of language and culture. This wide range of subject matter is incisively handled in a style which is both elegant and economical.

Theoretical Linguistics and Disordered Language (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar)

Theoretical Linguistics and Disordered Language (RLE Linguistics B: Grammar) PDF Author: Martin Ball
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317933389
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
The rapid increase of interest in disordered speech and language among linguists over the past decade or so has resulted in many books of practical help to speech pathologists in terms of assessment and remediation. Little, however, has appeared to examine the theoretical implications of the interaction between these two fields. This book aims to fill this gap, by showing how speech pathology can inform linguistic theory and vice versa.