Minimal Languages in Action
Minimal Languages in Action

Author: Cliff Goddard

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-05-24

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 3030640779

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This edited book explores the rising interest in minimal languages – radically simplified languages using cross-translatable words and grammar, fulfilling the widely-recognised need to use language which is clear, accessible and easy to translate. The authors draw on case studies from around the world to demonstrate how early adopters have been putting Minimal English, Minimal Finnish, and other minimal languages into action: in language teaching and learning, ‘easy language’ projects, agricultural development training, language revitalisation, intercultural education, paediatric assessment, and health messaging. As well as reporting how minimal languages are being put into service, the contributors explore how minimal languages can be adapted, localised and implemented differently for different purposes. Like its predecessor Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), the book will appeal to students and scholars of applied linguistics, language education and translation studies, as well as to professionals in any field where accessibility and translatability matter.

Minimal English for a Global World
Minimal English for a Global World

Author: Cliff Goddard

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 3319625128

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This book introduces a new tool for improving communication and promoting clearer thinking in a world where the use of Global English can create numerous comprehension and communication issues. Based on research findings from cross-linguistic semantics, it contains essays and studies by leading experts exploring the value and application of ‘Minimal English’ in various fields, including ethics, health, human rights discourse, education and international relations. In doing so, it provides informed guidelines and practical advice on how to communicate in clear and cross-translatable ways in Minimal English. This innovative edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of applied linguistics, language education and translation studies.

Minimal Perl
Minimal Perl

Author: Tim Maher

Publisher: Manning Publications

Published: 2006-10-01

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 1932394508

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No-nonsense and practical, yet with wit and charm. A joy to read."" -Dan Sanderson, Software Developer, Amazon.com ""Shows style, not just facts-valuable."" -Brian Downs, former Training Director, Lucent Technologies ""Brilliant, never tedious-highly recommended!"" -Jon Allen, Maintainer of perldoc.perl.org ""You could have chosen no better primer than this book."" -Damian Conway, from the Foreword Perl is a complex language that can be difficult to master. Perl advocates boast that ""There's More Than One Way To Do It,"" but do you really want to learn several ways of saying the same thing to a computer? To make Perl more accessible, Dr. Tim Maher has over the years designed and taught an essential subset of the language that is smaller, yet practical and powerful. With this engaging book you can now benefit from ""Minimal Perl,"" even if all you know about Unix is grep. You will learn how to write simple Perl commands-many just one-liners-that go far beyond the limitations of Unix utilities, and those of Linux, MacOS/X, etc. And you'll acquire the more advanced Perl skills used in scripts by capitalizing on your knowledge of related Shell resources. Sprinkled throughout are many Unix-specific Perl tips. This book is especially suitable for system administrators, webmasters, and software developers.

Plain Language
Plain Language

Author: Stefano Rastelli

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-29

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1040155170

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Plain Language: A Psycholinguistic Approach employs principles from the field of psycholinguistics to explore factors that make a sentence or text easy or difficult to process by the cognitive mechanisms that support language processing, and describes how levels of difficulty might function within bureaucratic power structures. Drawing from experimental data on readability, the author employs a metaphor of three "ghost" readers in the mind that exist and interact with each other: the syntactic reader (the one searching for the structure), the statistical reader (the one driven by previous experiences), and finally the pragmatic reader (the one searching for meaning). The penultimate chapter concerns a novel psycholinguistic experiment showing that complexly written texts may prevent adult citizens with average literacy skills from accessing important information related to their health, work, and right to representation, thereby drawing a line between the psycholinguistics of language comprehension and the maintenance of existing power structures. Written in plain language itself, this book is designed to be easily understandable from an undergraduate level and makes for fascinating reading for all students and researchers in linguistics and psycholinguistics, as well as supplementary reading for students of sociolinguistics and related modules. Students, researchers, and interested general readers will develop an understanding that knowing how the mind reads and understands language can help stakeholders to ensure equal access to information and democratic processes.

Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices
Languages, Linguistics and Development Practices

Author: Deborah Hill

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-05-06

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 3030935221

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This edited book presents case-studies and reflections on the role of languages and their analytic study in development practices across four regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. The authors highlight the importance of conceptual studies of languages and cultures, as well as language choice, for enhancing development practices, demonstrating the value that language analysis and the humanities can add to the already multi-disciplinary field of Development Studies. The chapters draw on the fields of linguistics, human geography, education, diverse economies, community learning, sociology, and anthropology, and topics covered include some significant areas of interest to sustainable human development: education, work, finances, age, gender; as well as a key approach to development (asset-based community development). Chapters on informal adult learning provide opportunities to explore how and why language and linguistic analysis is relevant to development projects. The volume aims to promote collaboration and interdisciplinary dialogue and should be of interest to academics, practitioners and students of language and development, and to those working in the field of development globally.

Fluent Forever
Fluent Forever

Author: Gabriel Wyner

Publisher: Harmony

Published: 2014-08-05

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 038534810X

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick. “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered. Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.

The Architecture of Language
The Architecture of Language

Author: Nirmalangshu Mukherji

Publisher: OUP India

Published: 2006-08-17

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13: 019568446X

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In this book, Noam Chomsky reflects on the history of 'generative enterprise' - his approach to the study of languages that revolutionized our understanding of human languages and other cognitive systems.

The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics
The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics

Author: Wen Xu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-04

Total Pages: 792

ISBN-13: 1351034693

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The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics provides a comprehensive introduction and essential reference work to cognitive linguistics. It encompasses a wide range of perspectives and approaches, covering all the key areas of cognitive linguistics and drawing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research in pragmatics, discourse analysis, biolinguistics, ecolinguistics, evolutionary linguistics, neuroscience, language pedagogy, and translation studies. The forty-three chapters, written by international specialists in the field, cover four major areas: • Basic theories and hypotheses, including cognitive semantics, cognitive grammar, construction grammar, frame semantics, natural semantic metalanguage, and word grammar; • Central topics, including embodiment, image schemas, categorization, metaphor and metonymy, construal, iconicity, motivation, constructionalization, intersubjectivity, grounding, multimodality, cognitive pragmatics, cognitive poetics, humor, and linguistic synaesthesia, among others; • Interfaces between cognitive linguistics and other areas of linguistic study, including cultural linguistics, linguistic typology, figurative language, signed languages, gesture, language acquisition and pedagogy, translation studies, and digital lexicography; • New directions in cognitive linguistics, demonstrating the relevance of the approach to social, diachronic, neuroscientific, biological, ecological, multimodal, and quantitative studies. The Routledge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is an indispensable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for all researchers working in this area.