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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics > General
The recent evolution of western societies has been characterized by
an increasing emphasis on information and communication. As the
amount of available information increases, however, the user --
worker, student, citizen -- faces a new problem: selecting and
accessing relevant information. More than ever it is crucial to
find efficient ways for users to interact with information systems
in a way that prevents them from being overwhelmed or simply
missing their targets. As a result, hypertext systems have been
developed as a means of facilitating the interactions between
readers and text. In hypertext, information is organized as a
network in which nodes are text chunks (e.g., lists of items,
paragraphs, pages) and links are relationships between the nodes
(e.g., semantic associations, expansions, definitions, examples --
virtually any kind of relation that can be imagined between two
text passages). Unfortunately, the many ways in which these
hypertext interfaces can be designed has caused a complexity that
extends far beyond the processing abilities of regular users.
Therefore, it has become widely recognized that a more rational
approach based on a thorough analysis of information users' needs,
capacities, capabilities, and skills is needed. This volume seeks
to meet that need.
This book presents a set of contributions to the current flow of psycholinguistic research, with new and challenging data gathered from Spanish that may illuminate issues about the generality of language processing models. Although it is possible to find a considerable amount of papers on psycholinguistic research with the Spanish language published in English-speaking journals, unfortunately, the scientific community does not have access to an overview of psycholinguistics in Spain. This book overcomes these limitations because it brings together state-of-the-art descriptions of the research and theory of the different subareas of psycholinguistics currently being studied in Spain. Spanish, the third most widely-used language in the world, differs from English in a number of important respects. Since English has been predominant in psycholinguistic research, contrasting properties of Spanish may help to test the generality of language processing mechanisms and to refine their description. The set of contrasting features considered in this book includes acoustical and syllabic transparency, shallow orthography, a much richer morphology, flexibility in word order, less variability in intonational contours, and the existence of null pronominal subjects for inflected verbs. There are also interesting contrasts in the frequency of different linguistic units, whose impact on language processing is also evaluated. One of the main lines of argument throughout this book deals with the tension between universality and variation as a way of characterizing the functioning of language capacities and processes. The variety of topics covered by this book ranges from one end of the spectrum of language related behavior to the other: speech perception, lexical access in word recognition, relations between phonological and orthographic representations, sentence processing, discourse comprehension, and language production. All chapters focus on questions of general interest within each topic, and in most cases they appeal to one particular feature of the Spanish language that is relevant for a given question. Most chapters show the indisputable importance of crosslinguistic research in psycholinguistics to improve understanding on whether universal cognitive mechanisms and language specific routines underlie the ability of understanding and producing language.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.
Idioms have always aroused the curiosity of linguists and there is
a long tradition in the study of idioms, especially within the
fields of lexicology and lexicography. Without denying the
importance of this tradition, this volume presents an overview of
recent idiom research outside the immediate domain of
lexicology/lexicography. The chapters address the status of idioms
in recent formal and experimental linguistic theorizing.
Interdisciplinary in scope, the contributions are written by
psycholinguists and theoretical and computational linguists who
take mutual advantage of progress in all disciplines. Linguists
supply the facts and analyses psycholinguists base their models and
experiments on; psycholinguists in turn confront linguistic models
with psycholinguistic findings. Computational linguists build
natural language processing systems on the basis of models and
frameworks provided by theoretical linguists and, sometimes
psycholinguists, and set up large corpora to test linguistic
hypotheses. Besides the fascination for idioms that make up such a
large part of our knowledge of language, interdisciplinarity is one
of the attractions of investigations in idiomatic language and
language processing.
The "Bilingual New Testament, English - Spanish" is derived from
the 1901 American Standard Version and the 1909 Biblia Reina Valera
translations.
Researchers have looked into the role of individual differences in second language learning and found that differences between learners in areas such as language aptitude, language learning motivation and exposure to the language influence second language learning. Most of this research concerned adults. Far fewer studies have addressed the role of individual differences in second language learning of young learners. As second language learning programmes tend to start earlier than before and children are nowadays frequently exposed to a foreign language in social settings such as online games and social media, studying the role of individual differences in young learners can contribute both to SLA-theories and to evidence-based L2 education. This book discusses recent findings concerning the role of individual differences in language learning in young learners. The chapters in the book concern different topics linked to internal individual differences such as language aptitude, motivation, attitude and external individual differences such as exposure and type of instruction, the relative contribution of internal and external factors to language learning, and the interplay between the two types of individual differences.
This volume is a direct result of the International Symposium on
Japanese Sentence Processing held at Duke University. The symposium
provided the first opportunity for researchers in three
disciplinary areas from both Japan and the United States to
participate in a conference where they could discuss issues
concerning Japanese syntactic processing. The goals of the
symposium were three-fold:
Many regional languages across the world are threatened by modernization and urbanization whilst the universal and rapid rise of migration has created new and unprecedented forms of multilingualism. Aspects of education, national policies and attitudes towards minority languages are documented.
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.
One of the liveliest forums for sharing psychological, linguistic,
philosophical, and computer science perspectives on
psycholinguistics has been the annual meeting of the CUNY Sentence
Processing Conference. Documenting the state of the art in several
important approaches to sentence processing, this volume consists
of selected papers that had been presented at the Sixth CUNY
Conference. The editors not only present the main themes that ran
through the conference but also honor the breadth of the
presentations from disciplines including linguistics, experimental
psychology, and computer science. The variety of sentence
processing topics examined includes:
Building on the success of previous editions, Focus on Grammar 5th Edition continues to leverage its successful four-step approach that lets learners move from comprehension to communication within a clear and consistent structure. Centred on thematic instruction, Focus on Grammar combines comprehensive grammar coverage with abundant practice, critical thinking skills, and ongoing assessment, helping students communicate confidently, accurately, and fluently in everyday situations. The 5th Edition continues to incorporate the findings of corpus linguistics in grammar notes, charts, and practice activities, while never losing sight of what is pedagogically sound and useful.
This volume represents the culmination of an extensive research project that studied the development of linguistic form/function relations in narrative discourse. It is unique in the extent of data which it analyzes-more than 250 texts from children and adults speaking five different languages-and in its crosslinguistic, typological focus. It is the first book to address the issue of how the structural properties and rhetorical preferences of different native languages-English, German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Turkish-impinge on narrative abilities across different phases of development. The work of Berman and Slobin and their colleagues provides insight into the interplay between shared, possibly universal, patterns in the developing ability to create well-constructed, globally organized narratives among preschoolers Contact Susan Barker at (201) 258-2282 for more information. from three years of age compared with school children and adults, contrasted against the impact of typological and rhetorical features of particular native languages on how speakers express these abilities in the process of "relating events in narrative." This volume also makes a special contribution to the field of language acquisition and development by providing detailed analyses of how linguistic forms come to be used in the service of narrative functions, such as the expression of temporal relations of simultaneity and retrospection, perspective-taking on events, and textual connectivity. To present this information, the authors prepared in-depth analyses of a wide range of linguistic systems, including tense-aspect marking, passive and middle voice, locative and directional predications, connectivity markers,null subjects, and relative clause constructions. In contrast to most work in the field of language acquisition, this book focuses on developments in the use of these early forms in extended discourse-beyond the initial phase of early language development. The book offers a pioneering approach to the interactions between form and function in the development and use of language, from a typological linguistic perspective. The study is based on a large crosslinguistic corpus of narratives, elicited from preschool, school-age, and adult subjects. All of the narratives were elicited by the same picture storybook, Frog, Where Are You?, by Mercer Mayer. (An appendix lists related studies using the same storybook in 50 languages.) The findings illuminate both universal and language-specific patterns of development, providing new insights into questions of language and thought.
Research in cognitive psychology has contributed much to our understanding of reading and spelling. Most of this work has concentrated on the processes used by literate adults to comprehend and produce written language, but there is a growing interest in applying cognitive theories to the development of literacy, and to the understanfing of disorders of reading and writing. Such disorders may be acquired as a consequence of a brain injury to a previously literate adult, or may be developmental, occurring in otherwise normal children.; This textbook attempts to present this work to a non-specialist audience. Though written primarily with students of psychology and education in mind, it is accessible also to parents and teachers.; The broad organization of the first edition is retained. The book opens with a consideration of the history and nature of writing, then moves on to deal with the nature of skilled reading. Other chapters deal with: the different ways that brain injury in adulthood can disrupt the mature reading skill the "acquired dyslexias"; spelling and writing processes, both in skilled writers and in patients with "acquired dysgraphia"; the way children develop the skills of reading and writing; and developmental reading and writing problems.
How do we learn to produce and comprehend non-literal language? Competing theories have only partially accounted for the variety of language comprehension evoked in metaphor, irony, and jokes. Rachel Giora has developed a novel and comprehensive theory, the Graded Salience Hypothesis, to explain figuative language comprehension. Giora contends that the salience of meanings (i.e., the cognitive priority we ascribe to words encoded in our mental lexicon) has the primary role in language comprehension and production.
In Methods in Latin Computational Linguistics, Barbara McGillivray presents some of the most significant methodological foundations of the emerging field of Latin Computational Linguistics. The reader will find an overview of the computational resources and tools available for Latin and three corpus case studies covering morpho-syntactic and lexical-semantic aspects of Latin verb valency, as well as quantitative diachronic explorations of the argument realization of Latin prefixed verbs. The computational models and the multivariate data analysis techniques employed are explained with a detailed but accessible language. Barbara McGillivray convincingly shows the challenges and opportunities of combining computational methods and historical language data, and contributes to driving the technological change that is affecting Historical Linguistics and the Humanities.
This volume presents contributions to the conference Old English Runes Workshop, organised by the Eichstatt-Munchen Research Unit of the Academy project Runic Writing in the Germanic Languages (RuneS) and held at the Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt in March 2012. The conference brought together experts working in an area broadly referred to as Runology. Scholars working with runic objects come from several different fields of specialisation, and the aim was to provide more mutual insight into the various methodologies and theoretical paradigms used in these different approaches to the study of runes or, in the present instance more specifically, runic inscriptions generally assigned to the English and/or the Frisian runic corpora. Success in that aim should automatically bring with it the reciprocal benefit of improving access to and understanding of the runic evidence, expanding and enhancing insights gained within such closely connected areas of study of the Early-Mediaeval past.
Ever since attempts were made to describe and explain normal
language development, references to exceptional circumstances have
been made. Variations in the conditions under which language is
acquired can be regarded as natural experiments, which would not be
feasible or ethical under normal circumstances. This can throw
light on such questions as:
This book is an introduction to Vygotsky and his theories of language and second language acquisition. Employing a dual framework of metatheory and metaphor, the author focuses on Vygotsky's cultural-historical perspective (contrasted with the sociocultural heritage more prevalent in the West) and its emphasis on history as change and thought as related to action. Included also is a comparison of Vygotskyan and Chomskyan theories of language and grammar.
This reproduction of Visser's volumes is more than welcome, and timely, as the volumes have been out of print for quite some time and were sometimes a little bit difficult to navigate. Having a searchable and easy-to-use online version, although maybe not perfect, available now means a revival for scholarship that celebrates its fiftieth birthday without losing any of its relevance.
Andreas Stokke presents a comprehensive study of lying and insincere language use. He investigates how lying relates to other forms of insincerity and explores the kinds of attitudes that go with insincere uses of language. Part I develops an account of insincerity as a linguistic phenomenon. Stokke provides a detailed theory of the distinction between lying and speaking insincerely, and accounts for the relationship between lying and deceiving. A novel framework of assertion underpins the analysis of various kinds of insincere speech, including false implicature and forms of misleading with presuppositions, prosodic focus, and semantic incompleteness. Part II sets out the relationship between what is communicated and the speaker's attitudes. Stokke develops the view of insincerity as a shallow phenomenon that is dependent on conscious attitudes rather than deeper motivations. The various of ways of speaking while being indifferent toward what one communicates are covered, and the phenomenon of 'bullshitting' is distinguished from lying and other forms of insincerity. Finally, an account of insincere uses of interrogative, imperative, and exclamative utterances is also given.
This is the most comprehensive account of Catalan phonology ever
published. Catalan is a Romance language, occupying a position
somewhere between French, Spanish, and Italian. It is the first
language of six and a half million people in the northeastern Spain
and of the peoples of Andorra, French Catalonia, the Balearic
Islands, and a small region of Sardinia. Dr Wheeler describes
Barcelona pronunciation and the major varieties of western
Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca, and considers social and
stylistic variation. |
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