People constantly talk to each other about experience or knowledge resulting from spatial perception; they describe the size, shape, orientation and position of objects using a wide range of spatial e
Fortescue (linguistics, U. of Copenhagen) introduces linguistics as a fable in order to convince readers that it can be entertaining, thought-provoking, and relevant to life outside dusty academe. He
This book describes Optimality Theory from the top down, explaining and exploring the central premises of OT and the results of their praxis. Examples are drawn from phonology, morphology, and syntax, but the emphasis throughout is on the theory rather than the examples, on understanding what is special about OT and on equipping readers to apply it, extend it, and critique it in their own areas of interest. To enhance the book's usefulness for researchers in allied disciplines, the topdown view of OT extends to work on first- and second-language acquisition, phonetics and functional phonology, computational linguistics, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Furthermore, to situate OT for those coming from other traditions, this book also contains much discussion of OT's intellectual origins, its predecessors, and its contemporary competitors. Each chapter concludes with extensive suggestions for further reading, classified by topics, and supplemented by a massive bibliography (
Word frequency distributions are characterized by very large numbers of rare words, a property which leads to unusual statistical phenomena. Special statistical techniques for their analysis can be fo
Originally published as Le Mirage linguistique, this book remains the definitive study of the role of linguistics in structuralism and poststructuralism. Thomas Pavel examines recent French thought th
This collection of original essays on the practice of linguistic fieldwork and language documentation by twelve leading field linguists considers the study of languages in a natural setting. Drawing o
No ordinary dictionary, David Crystal's A Dictionary of Language includes not only descriptions of hundreds of languages literally, from A to Z (Abkhaz to Zyryan), and definitions of literary and gram
Landmarks in Linguistic Thought II introduces the major issues and themes that have determined the development of Western thinking about language, meaning and communication in the twentieth century.Ea
The first symposium in North America to address corpus linguistics was sponsored by the University of Michigan's English Language Institute in 1999. Corpus Linguistics in North America is a collection
With the rise of the internet and the proliferation of technology to gather and organize data, our era has been defined as "the information age." With the prominence of information as a research conce
This series of HANDBOOKS OF LINGUISTICS AND COMMUNICATION SCIENCE is designed to illuminate a field which not only includes general linguistics and the study of linguistics as applied to specific lang
The latest product of recent efforts to find a deeper common root to the many family languages around the world that have been recognized for a century. Greenberg (anthropology and linguistics, Stanfo
Wilhelm von Humboldt's classic study of human language was first published in 1836, as a general introduction to his three-volume treatise on the Kawi language of Java. It is the final statement of his lifelong study of the nature of language, exploring its universal structures and its relation to mind and culture. Empirically wide-ranging - Humboldt goes far beyond the Indo-European family of languages - it remains one of the most interesting and important attempts to draw philosophical conclusions from comparative linguistics. This 1999 volume presents a translation by Peter Heath, together with an introduction by Michael Losonsky that places Humboldt's work in its historical context and discusses its relevance to contemporary work in philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, and psychology.
Organized into the core subject areas of linguistics, this invaluable book enables readers to contextualize each particular definition and gain a wider understanding of each topic. Each chapter begins
In this introductory-level linguistics text, Steven E. Weisler and Slavko Milekicdevelop a theoretically motivated analysis of language with an emphasis on grammar construction andargumentation. They
This is an introduction to Optimality Theory, whose central idea is that surface forms of language reflect resolutions of conflicts between competing constraints. The book does not limit its empirical
Ideas from theoretical computer science continue to have an important influence on areas of philosophy and linguistics. The papers contained in this volume by some of the most influential computer sci
Research on creolization, language change, and language acquisition has beenconverging toward a triangulation of the constraints along which grammatical systems develop withinindividual speakers--and
