Trends in Soviet Theoretical Linguistics
Trends in Soviet Theoretical Linguistics

Author: F. Kiefer

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 9401025363

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o. Theoretical linguistics is a term not very often used in Soviet Linguistics. The terms 'structural linguistics', 'mathematical linguistics', 'applied lin guistics' (which, incidentally, has another meaning here than in other parts of the world) all may cover theoretical work in linguistics. In older days serious theoretical work was done under the heading 'machine translation'. Very often the need for a special term for theoretically oriented studies in linguistics does not even arise. Does this mean that there is no real theoretical linguistics in the Soviet Union? This would be, of course, a completely false conclusion. Some lin guists tend to identify theoretical linguistics with generative grammar. Though it might be true - and I am myself very much inclined to subscribe to this view - that generative grammar has been the most fruitful linguistic theory up to now, this does not justify, however, the above identification. Incidentally, as we shall see later on, generative grammar has not been left unnoticed in the Soviet Union either. There are different trends within theo retical linguistics, one of which is generative grammar. While generative grammar (though one can worry about the content of this notion for many. internal and external reasons) seems to be the mean theoretical trend in the United States and in Western Europe, it represents only one of the main trends in Soviet linguistics.

Semantic Relations and the Lexicon
Semantic Relations and the Lexicon

Author: M. Lynne Murphy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-10-02

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1139437453

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Semantic Relations and the Lexicon explores the many paradigmatic semantic relations between words, such as synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy, and their relevance to the mental organization of our vocabularies. Drawing on a century's research in linguistics, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and computer science, M. Lynne Murphy proposes a pragmatic approach to these relations. Whereas traditional approaches have claimed that paradigmatic relations are part of our lexical knowledge, Dr Murphy argues that they constitute metalinguistic knowledge, which can be derived through a single relational principle, and may also be stored as part of our extra-lexical, conceptual representations of a word. Part I shows how this approach can account for the properties of lexical relations in ways that traditional approaches cannot, and Part II examines particular relations in detail. This book will serve as an informative handbook for all linguists and cognitive scientists interested in the mental representation of vocabulary.

Language Production, Cognition, and the Lexicon
Language Production, Cognition, and the Lexicon

Author: Núria Gala

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-11-11

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 3319080431

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The book collects contributions from well-established researchers at the interface between language and cognition. It provides an overview of the latest insights into this interdisciplinary field from the perspectives of natural language processing, computer science, psycholinguistics and cognitive science. One of the pioneers in cognitive natural language processing is Michael Zock, to whom this volume is dedicated. The structure of the book reflects his main research interests: lexicon and lexical analysis, semantics, language and speech generation, reading and writing technologies, language resources and language engineering. The book is a valuable reference work and authoritative information source, giving an overview on the field and describing the state of the art as well as future developments. It is intended for researchers and advanced students interested in the subject. One of the pioneers in cognitive natural language processing is Michael Zock, to whom this volume is dedicated. The structure of the book reflects his main research interests: Lexicon and lexical analysis, semantics, language and speech generation, reading and writing technologies, language resources and language engineering. The book is a valuable reference work and authoritative information source, giving an overview on the field and describing the state of the art as well as future developments. It is intended for researchers and advanced students interested in the subject. One of the pioneers in cognitive natural language processing is Michael Zock, to whom this volume is dedicated. The structure of the book reflects his main research interests: Lexicon and lexical analysis, semantics, language and speech generation, reading and writing technologies, language resources and language engineering. The book is a valuable reference work and authoritative information source, giving an overview on the field and describing the state of the art as well as future developments. It is intended for researchers and advanced students interested in the subject.

Gemination in the Akkadian Verb
Gemination in the Akkadian Verb

Author: Kouwenberg

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-07-17

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 9004358633

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This book offers an account of the role of gemination as a grammatical and lexical feature of Akkadian and a comprehensive treatment of the nominal and verbal categories that are characterized by it. It argues that gemination is basically an iconic phenomenon: its presence correlates with an extension in the meaning of the word vis-à-vis that of the corresponding word without gemination. This semantic extension is often realized as plurality; in other cases gemination has been subject to a process of grammaticalization, through which it has acquired a more abstract function, mostly that of underlining a high degree of salience or transitivity. Particular attention is paid to the D-stem, which is discussed exhaustively for the first time here. It is the most important and the most controversial of the verbal stems not only in Akkadian, but also in Semitic as a whole. It is shown that the use of the D-stems of transitive verbs is mainly determined by various kinds of verbal plurality. With regard to the "factitive" D-sems of intransitive verbs a new and more nuanced definition is given of the concepts of factitivity as opposed to causativity; this allows a more satisfactory account of the relationship between the D-stem and the causative S-stem. The book includes detailed discussions of many individual verbs and passages from Akkadian texts. Lists of words with gemination and extensive indexes provide valuable reference material.

Semantics
Semantics

Author: Igor Mel’čuk

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2013-07-09

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 9027271658

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This book presents an innovative approach to linguistic semantics, starting from the idea that language is a mechanism for the expression of linguistic meanings as particular surface forms (texts). Semantics is that system of rules that ensures a transition from a Semantic Representation of the meaning of a family of synonymous sentences to the Deep-Syntactic Representation of a particular sentence. Framed in terms of Meaning-Text linguistics, this volume discusses the Deep-Syntactic Representation and the transition from Semantics to Deep-Syntax via Semantic paraphrasing (the equivalence amongst Semantic Representations), Deep-Syntactic paraphrasing (the equivalence amongst Deep-Syntactic Representations), and the passage between the two. A chapter is dedicated to the Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary, a semantically based and co-occurrence-centered lexicon. Reflecting the author’s life-long dedication to semantics and syntax, this book is a paradigm-shifting contribution to language studies whose originality and daring will make it essential reading for linguists, anthropologists, semioticians, and computational linguists.

Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics
Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics

Author: Various

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-02

Total Pages: 15061

ISBN-13: 1136158324

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Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics brings together as one set, mini-sets, or individual volumes, a series of previously out-of-print classics from a variety of academic imprints. With titles ranging from Applied Linguistics and Language Learning to Experimental Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics Today: International Perspectives, this set provides in one place a wealth of important reference sources from a wide range of authors expert in the field.

Surface Syntax of English
Surface Syntax of English

Author: Igor? Aleksandrovi? Mel??uk

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 9027215154

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This book is the first attempt to describe the syntax of Contemporary English exclusively in terms of dependencies (most American works on the subject being in terms of phrase structure, or constituency). The three main features of it are: (1) a fully formal presentation, (2) a reasonably complete coverage of English surface syntax, and (3) an exposition oriented towards human readers (rather than computers). The book can be recommended for several categories of readers: specialists in English syntax, linguists interested in general and theoretical syntax, computational linguists, researchers in related fields (including psychology and artificial intelligence) concerned with automatic processing (both synthesis and analysis) of English texts.

Perspectives on Causation
Perspectives on Causation

Author: Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-07-27

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 3030343081

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This book explores relationships and maps out intersections between discussions on causation in three scientific disciplines: linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. The book is organized in five thematic parts, investigating connections between philosophical and linguistic studies of causation; presenting novel methodologies for studying the representation of causation; tackling central issues in syntactic and semantic representation of causal relations; and introducing recent advances in philosophical thinking on causation. Beyond its thematic organization, readers will find several recurring topics throughout this book, such as the attempt to reduce causality to other non-causal terms; causal pluralism vs. one all-encompassing account for causation; causal relations pertaining to the mental as opposed to the physical realm, and more. This collection also lays the foundation for questioning whether it is possible to evaluate available philosophical approaches to causation against the variety of linguistic phenomena ranging across diverse lexical and grammatical items, such as bound morphemes, prepositions, connectives, and verbs. Above all, it lays the groundwork for considering whether the fruits of the psychological-cognitive study of the perception of causal relations may contribute to linguistic and philosophical studies, and whether insights from linguistics can benefit the other two disciplines.

Unaccusativity
Unaccusativity

Author: Beth Levin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1994-12-07

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780262620949

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Besides providing extensive support for David Perlmutter's hypothesis that unaccusativity is syntactically represented but semantically determined, this monograph contributes significantly to the development of a theory of lexical semantic representation and to the elucidation of the mapping from lexical semantics to syntax. Unaccusativity is an extended investigation into a set of linguistic phenomena that have received much attention over the last fifteen years. Besides providing extensive support for David Perlmutter's hypothesis that unaccusativity is syntactically represented but semantically determined, this monograph contributes significantly to the development of a theory of lexical semantic representation and to the elucidation of the mapping from lexical semantics to syntax. Perlmutter's Unaccusative Hypothesis proposes that there are two classes of intransitive verbs - unergatives and unaccusatives - each associated with a distinct syntactic configuration. Unaccusativity begins by isolating the semantic factors that determine whether a verb will be unaccusative or unergative through a careful examination of the behavior of intransitive verbs from a range of semantic classes in diverse syntactic constructions. Notable are the extensive discussions of verbs of motion, verbs of emission, and various types of verbs of change of state. The authors then introduce rules that determine the syntactic expression of the arguments of the verbs investigated and examine the interactions among them. The proper treatment of verbs that systematically show multiple meanings - and hence variable classification as unaccusative or unergative - is also considered. In the final chapter, the authors argue that the distribution of locative inversion, a purported unaccusative diagnostic, is determined instead by discourse considerations. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 26

The Stuff of Thought
The Stuff of Thought

Author: Steven Pinker

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2007-09-11

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 1101202602

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This New York Times bestseller is an exciting and fearless investigation of language from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Sense of Style and Enlightenment Now. "Curious, inventive, fearless, naughty." --The New York Times Book Review Bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide lucid explanations of deep and powerful ideas. His previous books - including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate - have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today's most important popular science writers. In The Stuff of Thought, Pinker presents a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. Considering scientific questions with examples from everyday life, The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.