Author: Paul M. Pietroski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192540890
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
Humans naturally acquire languages that connect meanings with pronunciations. Paul M. Pietroski presents an account of these distinctive languages as generative procedures that respect substantive constraints. Children acquire meaningful lexical items that can be combined, in certain ways, to form meaningful complex expressions. This raises questions about what meanings are, how they can be combined, and what kinds of meanings lexical items can have. According to Pietroski, meanings are neither concepts nor extensions, and sentences do not have truth conditions. He argues that meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort. More specifically, phrasal meanings are instructions for how to build monadic concepts (a.k.a. mental predicates) that are massively conjunctive, while lexical meanings are instructions for how to fetch concepts that are monadic or dyadic. This allows for polysemy, since a lexical item can be linked to an address that is shared by a family of fetchable concepts. But the posited combinatorial operations are limited and limiting. They impose severe restrictions on which concepts can be fetched for purposes of semantic composition. Correspondingly, Pietroski argues that in lexicalization, available representations are often used to introduce concepts that can be combined via the relevant operations.
Conjoining Meanings
Author: Paul M. Pietroski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192540890
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
Humans naturally acquire languages that connect meanings with pronunciations. Paul M. Pietroski presents an account of these distinctive languages as generative procedures that respect substantive constraints. Children acquire meaningful lexical items that can be combined, in certain ways, to form meaningful complex expressions. This raises questions about what meanings are, how they can be combined, and what kinds of meanings lexical items can have. According to Pietroski, meanings are neither concepts nor extensions, and sentences do not have truth conditions. He argues that meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort. More specifically, phrasal meanings are instructions for how to build monadic concepts (a.k.a. mental predicates) that are massively conjunctive, while lexical meanings are instructions for how to fetch concepts that are monadic or dyadic. This allows for polysemy, since a lexical item can be linked to an address that is shared by a family of fetchable concepts. But the posited combinatorial operations are limited and limiting. They impose severe restrictions on which concepts can be fetched for purposes of semantic composition. Correspondingly, Pietroski argues that in lexicalization, available representations are often used to introduce concepts that can be combined via the relevant operations.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192540890
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
Humans naturally acquire languages that connect meanings with pronunciations. Paul M. Pietroski presents an account of these distinctive languages as generative procedures that respect substantive constraints. Children acquire meaningful lexical items that can be combined, in certain ways, to form meaningful complex expressions. This raises questions about what meanings are, how they can be combined, and what kinds of meanings lexical items can have. According to Pietroski, meanings are neither concepts nor extensions, and sentences do not have truth conditions. He argues that meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort. More specifically, phrasal meanings are instructions for how to build monadic concepts (a.k.a. mental predicates) that are massively conjunctive, while lexical meanings are instructions for how to fetch concepts that are monadic or dyadic. This allows for polysemy, since a lexical item can be linked to an address that is shared by a family of fetchable concepts. But the posited combinatorial operations are limited and limiting. They impose severe restrictions on which concepts can be fetched for purposes of semantic composition. Correspondingly, Pietroski argues that in lexicalization, available representations are often used to introduce concepts that can be combined via the relevant operations.
Conjoining Meanings
Author: Paul M. Pietroski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198812728
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
Paul M. Pietroski presents an ambitious new account of human languages as generative procedures that respect substantive constraints. He argues that meanings are neither concepts nor extensions, and sentences do not have truth conditions; meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198812728
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 404
Book Description
Paul M. Pietroski presents an ambitious new account of human languages as generative procedures that respect substantive constraints. He argues that meanings are neither concepts nor extensions, and sentences do not have truth conditions; meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort.
A Companion to Chomsky
Author: Nicholas Allott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119598680
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 644
Book Description
A COMPANION TO CHOMSKY Widely considered to be one of the most important public intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky has revolutionized modern linguistics. His thought has had a profound impact upon the philosophy of language, mind, and science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science which his work helped to establish. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to his substantial body of work and the range of its influence, an international assembly of prominent linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists reflect upon the interdisciplinary reach of Chomsky's intellectual contributions. Balancing theoretical rigor with accessibility to the non-specialist, the Companion is organized into eight sections—including the historical development of Chomsky's theories and the current state of the art, comparison with rival usage-based approaches, and the relation of his generative approach to work on linguistic processing, acquisition, semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. Later chapters address Chomsky's rationalist critique of behaviorism and related empiricist approaches to psychology, as well as his insistence upon a "Galilean" methodology in cognitive science. Following a brief discussion of the relation of his work in linguistics to his work on political issues, the book concludes with an essay written by Chomsky himself, reflecting on the history and character of his work in his own words. A significant contribution to the study of Chomsky's thought, A Companion to Chomsky is an indispensable resource for philosophers, linguists, psychologists, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers with interest in Noam Chomsky's intellectual legacy as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119598680
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 644
Book Description
A COMPANION TO CHOMSKY Widely considered to be one of the most important public intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky has revolutionized modern linguistics. His thought has had a profound impact upon the philosophy of language, mind, and science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science which his work helped to establish. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to his substantial body of work and the range of its influence, an international assembly of prominent linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists reflect upon the interdisciplinary reach of Chomsky's intellectual contributions. Balancing theoretical rigor with accessibility to the non-specialist, the Companion is organized into eight sections—including the historical development of Chomsky's theories and the current state of the art, comparison with rival usage-based approaches, and the relation of his generative approach to work on linguistic processing, acquisition, semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. Later chapters address Chomsky's rationalist critique of behaviorism and related empiricist approaches to psychology, as well as his insistence upon a "Galilean" methodology in cognitive science. Following a brief discussion of the relation of his work in linguistics to his work on political issues, the book concludes with an essay written by Chomsky himself, reflecting on the history and character of his work in his own words. A significant contribution to the study of Chomsky's thought, A Companion to Chomsky is an indispensable resource for philosophers, linguists, psychologists, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers with interest in Noam Chomsky's intellectual legacy as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.
Grammar, Meaning, and Concepts
Author: Susan Strauss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131766504X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 575
Book Description
Grammar, Meaning, and Concepts: A Discourse-Based Approach to English Grammar is a book for language teachers and learners that focuses on the meanings of grammatical constructions within discourse, rather than on language as structure governed by rigid rules. This text emphasizes the ways in which users of language construct meaning, express viewpoints, and depict imageries using the conceptual, meaning-filled categories that underlie all of grammar. Written by a team of authors with years of experience teaching grammar to future teachers of English, this book puts grammar in the context of real language and illustrates grammar in use through an abundance of authentic data examples. Each chapter also provides a variety of activities that focus on grammar, genre, discourse, and meaning, which can be used as they are or can be adapted for classroom practice. The activities are also designed to raise awareness about discourse, grammar, and meaning in all facets of everyday life, and can be used as springboards for upper high school, undergraduate, and graduate level research projects and inquiry-based grammatical analysis. Grammar, Meaning, and Concepts is an ideal textbook for those in the areas of teacher education, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, second language teaching, ESL, EFL, and communications who are looking to teach and learn grammar from a dynamic perspective.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131766504X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 575
Book Description
Grammar, Meaning, and Concepts: A Discourse-Based Approach to English Grammar is a book for language teachers and learners that focuses on the meanings of grammatical constructions within discourse, rather than on language as structure governed by rigid rules. This text emphasizes the ways in which users of language construct meaning, express viewpoints, and depict imageries using the conceptual, meaning-filled categories that underlie all of grammar. Written by a team of authors with years of experience teaching grammar to future teachers of English, this book puts grammar in the context of real language and illustrates grammar in use through an abundance of authentic data examples. Each chapter also provides a variety of activities that focus on grammar, genre, discourse, and meaning, which can be used as they are or can be adapted for classroom practice. The activities are also designed to raise awareness about discourse, grammar, and meaning in all facets of everyday life, and can be used as springboards for upper high school, undergraduate, and graduate level research projects and inquiry-based grammatical analysis. Grammar, Meaning, and Concepts is an ideal textbook for those in the areas of teacher education, discourse analysis, applied linguistics, second language teaching, ESL, EFL, and communications who are looking to teach and learn grammar from a dynamic perspective.
Linguistic Pragmatism and Weather Reporting
Author: John Collins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192591797
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
Linguistic pragmatism claims that what we literally say goes characteristically beyond what the linguistic properties themselves mandate. In this book, John Collins provides a novel defence of this doctrine, arguing that linguistic meaning alone fails to fix truth conditions. While this position is supported by a range of theorists, Collins shows that it naturally follows from a syntactic thesis concerning the relative sparseness of what language alone can provide to semantic interpretation. Language-and by extension meaning-provides constraints upon what a speaker can literally say, but does not characteristically encode any definite thing to say. Collins then defends this doctrine against a range of alternatives and objections, focusing in particular on an analysis of weather reports: 'it is raining/snowing/sunny'. Such reporting is mostly location-sensitive in the sense that the utterance is true or not depending upon whether it is raining/snowing/sunny at the location of the utterance, rather than some other location. Collins offers a full analysis of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of weather reports, including many novel data. He shows that the constructions lack the linguistic resources to support the common literal locative readings. Other related phenomena are discussed such as the Saxon genitive, colour predication, quantifier domain restriction, and object deletion.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192591797
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227
Book Description
Linguistic pragmatism claims that what we literally say goes characteristically beyond what the linguistic properties themselves mandate. In this book, John Collins provides a novel defence of this doctrine, arguing that linguistic meaning alone fails to fix truth conditions. While this position is supported by a range of theorists, Collins shows that it naturally follows from a syntactic thesis concerning the relative sparseness of what language alone can provide to semantic interpretation. Language-and by extension meaning-provides constraints upon what a speaker can literally say, but does not characteristically encode any definite thing to say. Collins then defends this doctrine against a range of alternatives and objections, focusing in particular on an analysis of weather reports: 'it is raining/snowing/sunny'. Such reporting is mostly location-sensitive in the sense that the utterance is true or not depending upon whether it is raining/snowing/sunny at the location of the utterance, rather than some other location. Collins offers a full analysis of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of weather reports, including many novel data. He shows that the constructions lack the linguistic resources to support the common literal locative readings. Other related phenomena are discussed such as the Saxon genitive, colour predication, quantifier domain restriction, and object deletion.
What are (Un)Acceptability and (Un)Grammaticality? How do They Relate to One Another and to Interpretation?
Author: Susagna Tubau
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889663744
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Book Description
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889663744
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Book Description
Linguistic Luck
Author: Abrol Fairweather
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192660152
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
Despite the considerable attention the topic of luck has received in ethics and epistemology, very little has been published in the philosophical literature overtly on linguistic luck. The essays collected here provide the first sustained examination of the diverse forms of linguistic luck, the mechanisms available to reduce the impact of linguistic luck and how to cope with residual luck not eliminated by the causal, inferential, and intentional mechanisms which aim at its eradication. Of primary interest is not some, hitherto unnoticed widespread prevalence of luck in the determinants of meaning and communication, but rather the impressive extent to which luck is reduced or eliminated therein. Whether through casual, inferential or intentional means, the determinants of meaning and communication are impressively independent of luck and chance. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a world with human language where efforts to communicate succeed no better than chance. Linguistic communication is only possible because robust luck reducing variables are at work. The essays collected seek to understand the diversity, scope and mode of operation of luck reducing mechanisms in language. While it is not possible here to cover the full range of linguistic phenomena affected by luck, a wide range of issues in linguistics and philosophy of language are investigated, including, syntax processing, demonstrative reference, conversational implicature, testimony, lexical innovation, joint attention, communicative value, conventionalism vs. anti-conventionalism, metasemantic safety, and semantic skepticism, to name a few.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192660152
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
Despite the considerable attention the topic of luck has received in ethics and epistemology, very little has been published in the philosophical literature overtly on linguistic luck. The essays collected here provide the first sustained examination of the diverse forms of linguistic luck, the mechanisms available to reduce the impact of linguistic luck and how to cope with residual luck not eliminated by the causal, inferential, and intentional mechanisms which aim at its eradication. Of primary interest is not some, hitherto unnoticed widespread prevalence of luck in the determinants of meaning and communication, but rather the impressive extent to which luck is reduced or eliminated therein. Whether through casual, inferential or intentional means, the determinants of meaning and communication are impressively independent of luck and chance. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a world with human language where efforts to communicate succeed no better than chance. Linguistic communication is only possible because robust luck reducing variables are at work. The essays collected seek to understand the diversity, scope and mode of operation of luck reducing mechanisms in language. While it is not possible here to cover the full range of linguistic phenomena affected by luck, a wide range of issues in linguistics and philosophy of language are investigated, including, syntax processing, demonstrative reference, conversational implicature, testimony, lexical innovation, joint attention, communicative value, conventionalism vs. anti-conventionalism, metasemantic safety, and semantic skepticism, to name a few.
Signal and Information Processing, Networking and Computers
Author: Songlin Sun
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811947759
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 1294
Book Description
This book collects selected papers from the 9th Conference on Signal and Information Processing, Networking and Computers held online, in December, 2021. The book focuses on the current works of information theory, communication system, computer science, aerospace technologies, big data and other related technologies. Readers from both academia and industry of this field can contribute and find their interests from the book.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811947759
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 1294
Book Description
This book collects selected papers from the 9th Conference on Signal and Information Processing, Networking and Computers held online, in December, 2021. The book focuses on the current works of information theory, communication system, computer science, aerospace technologies, big data and other related technologies. Readers from both academia and industry of this field can contribute and find their interests from the book.
Politics, Poetics, Affect
Author: Stephen M. Hart
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443852163
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
This book seeks to re-vision the life and work of the Peruvian poet, César Vallejo (1892–1938). It consists of ten essays grouped into three complementary sections on Politics, Poetics and Affect. In Part I, William Rowe draws out the latent layers of political meaning in Vallejo’s ‘pre-political’ work, Trilce; Adam Feinstein weighs the evidence for and against the case that there was a rift between the two most important Latin American poets of the twentieth century (Vallejo and Pablo Neruda); and David Bellis compares and contrasts Vallejo’s Spanish Civil War poetry with that composed by Neruda and the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. In Part II, Dominic Moran provides a line-by-line dissection of Vallejo’s favourite poem of his early period, ‘El palco estrecho’; Adam Sharman offers a close reading of Poem XXIII of Trilce; Paloma Yannakakis looks at the role played by the human body in Vallejo’s poetics; while Michelle Clayton reviews the ways in which animals are represented in Vallejo’s poetry. In Part III, Santi Zegarra discusses the influence that Vallejo’s poetry has had on his film-making; Eduardo González Viaña reveals how he re-created Vallejo’s experience of imprisonment in his novel Vallejo en los infiernos; while Stephen Hart compares and contrasts the two main muses of Vallejo’s early poetry, his niece (Otilia Vallejo Gamboa) and the woman he met in Lima (Otilia Villanueva Pajares).
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443852163
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190
Book Description
This book seeks to re-vision the life and work of the Peruvian poet, César Vallejo (1892–1938). It consists of ten essays grouped into three complementary sections on Politics, Poetics and Affect. In Part I, William Rowe draws out the latent layers of political meaning in Vallejo’s ‘pre-political’ work, Trilce; Adam Feinstein weighs the evidence for and against the case that there was a rift between the two most important Latin American poets of the twentieth century (Vallejo and Pablo Neruda); and David Bellis compares and contrasts Vallejo’s Spanish Civil War poetry with that composed by Neruda and the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. In Part II, Dominic Moran provides a line-by-line dissection of Vallejo’s favourite poem of his early period, ‘El palco estrecho’; Adam Sharman offers a close reading of Poem XXIII of Trilce; Paloma Yannakakis looks at the role played by the human body in Vallejo’s poetics; while Michelle Clayton reviews the ways in which animals are represented in Vallejo’s poetry. In Part III, Santi Zegarra discusses the influence that Vallejo’s poetry has had on his film-making; Eduardo González Viaña reveals how he re-created Vallejo’s experience of imprisonment in his novel Vallejo en los infiernos; while Stephen Hart compares and contrasts the two main muses of Vallejo’s early poetry, his niece (Otilia Vallejo Gamboa) and the woman he met in Lima (Otilia Villanueva Pajares).
Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script
Author: Zev Handel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004352228
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
In the more than 3,000 years since its invention, the Chinese script has been adapted many times to write languages other than Chinese, including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Zhuang. In Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script, Zev Handel provides a comprehensive analysis of how the structural features of these languages constrained and motivated methods of script adaptation. This comparative study reveals the universal principles at work in the borrowing of logographic scripts. By analyzing and explaining these principles, Handel advances our understanding of how early writing systems have functioned and spread, providing a new framework that can be applied to the history of scripts beyond East Asia, such as Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004352228
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
In the more than 3,000 years since its invention, the Chinese script has been adapted many times to write languages other than Chinese, including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Zhuang. In Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script, Zev Handel provides a comprehensive analysis of how the structural features of these languages constrained and motivated methods of script adaptation. This comparative study reveals the universal principles at work in the borrowing of logographic scripts. By analyzing and explaining these principles, Handel advances our understanding of how early writing systems have functioned and spread, providing a new framework that can be applied to the history of scripts beyond East Asia, such as Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform.