Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Language and scientific explanation PDF full book. Access full book title Language and scientific explanation by Eran Asoulin. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Eran Asoulin Publisher: Language Science Press ISBN: 3961102635 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 96
Book Description
This book discusses the two main construals of the explanatory goals of semantic theories. The first, externalist conception, understands semantic theories in terms of a hermeneutic and interpretive explanatory project. The second, internalist conception, understands semantic theories in terms of the psychological mechanisms in virtue of which meanings are generated. It is argued that a fruitful scientific explanation is one that aims to uncover the underlying mechanisms in virtue of which the observable phenomena are made possible, and that a scientific semantics should be doing just that. If this is the case, then a scientific semantics is unlikely to be externalist, for reasons having to do with the subject matter and form of externalist theories. It is argued that semantics construed hermeneutically is nevertheless a valuable explanatory project.
Author: Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1527571815 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 349
Book Description
This volume brings together a number of researchers working on generative syntax and semantics, language acquisition and phonology to explore various theoretical frameworks, ranging from generative grammar and formal semantics to more descriptive approaches. The contributions gathered here investigate various aspects in the syntax, semantics, phonology and acquisition of Romanian in comparison with other (mainly Romance) languages. The book will be of interest to linguists who are keen on keeping up with the latest advances in the field of Romance studies, as well as those whose research bears on languages such as Hungarian, German, and Maltese, among others.
Author: Juhani Härmä Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1527542114 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
In the current discourse in pragmatics, multi-perspective methods are seen as the best way to understand language use in context. Within this discussion, the volume adopts diverse approaches to pragmatics, and focuses on comparing a wide selection of languages, including English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Polish, and Swedish. The contributions deal with grammatical expressions, prosody, textual genres and speech acts, which occur in different social interactions and in multicultural environments, including foreign language learning and lingua franca situations. Each topic is analysed by comparing its usage in at least two different languages or by contrasting the linguistic behaviour of different groups of language users.
Author: Paul R. Kroeger Publisher: Language Science Press ISBN: 3961101361 Category : Context (Linguistics) Languages : en Pages : 502
Book Description
This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect. Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered. As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.
Author: Eran Asoulin Publisher: Language Science Press ISBN: 3961102635 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 96
Book Description
This book discusses the two main construals of the explanatory goals of semantic theories. The first, externalist conception, understands semantic theories in terms of a hermeneutic and interpretive explanatory project. The second, internalist conception, understands semantic theories in terms of the psychological mechanisms in virtue of which meanings are generated. It is argued that a fruitful scientific explanation is one that aims to uncover the underlying mechanisms in virtue of which the observable phenomena are made possible, and that a scientific semantics should be doing just that. If this is the case, then a scientific semantics is unlikely to be externalist, for reasons having to do with the subject matter and form of externalist theories. It is argued that semantics construed hermeneutically is nevertheless a valuable explanatory project.
Author: Carsten Levisen Publisher: Walter de Gruyter ISBN: 3110294656 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 354
Book Description
Presenting original, detailed studies of keywords of Danish, this book breaks new ground for the study of language and cultural values. Based on evidence from the semantic categories of everyday language, such as the Danish concept of hygge (roughly meaning, ‘pleasant togetherness’), the book provides an integrative socio-cognitive framework for studying and understanding language-particular universes. It is argued that the worlds we live in are not linguistically and conceptually neutral, but rather that speakers who live by Danish concepts are likely to pay attention to their world in ways suggested by central Danish keywords and lexical grids. By means of a sophisticated semantic methodology, the author accounts for the meanings of even highly culture-specific and untranslatable linguistic concepts. The book offers new tools for comparative research into the diversity of semantic and cultural systems in contemporary Europe. Additionally, it contributes to the emerging discipline of cultural semantics, and to the ongoing debates of linguistic diversity, metalanguage, and the use of linguistic evidence in studies of culture and social cognition.
Author: Nina Tahmasebi Publisher: Language Science Press ISBN: 3961103127 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
Semantic change — how the meanings of words change over time — has preoccupied scholars since well before modern linguistics emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century, ushering in a new methodological turn in the study of language change. Compared to changes in sound and grammar, semantic change is the least understood. Ever since, the study of semantic change has progressed steadily, accumulating a vast store of knowledge for over a century, encompassing many languages and language families. Historical linguists also early on realized the potential of computers as research tools, with papers at the very first international conferences in computational linguistics in the 1960s. Such computational studies still tended to be small-scale, method-oriented, and qualitative. However, recent years have witnessed a sea-change in this regard. Big-data empirical quantitative investigations are now coming to the forefront, enabled by enormous advances in storage capability and processing power. Diachronic corpora have grown beyond imagination, defying exploration by traditional manual qualitative methods, and language technology has become increasingly data-driven and semantics-oriented. These developments present a golden opportunity for the empirical study of semantic change over both long and short time spans. A major challenge presently is to integrate the hard-earned knowledge and expertise of traditional historical linguistics with cutting-edge methodology explored primarily in computational linguistics. The idea for the present volume came out of a concrete response to this challenge. The 1st International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change (LChange'19), at ACL 2019, brought together scholars from both fields. This volume offers a survey of this exciting new direction in the study of semantic change, a discussion of the many remaining challenges that we face in pursuing it, and considerably updated and extended versions of a selection of the contributions to the LChange'19 workshop, addressing both more theoretical problems — e.g., discovery of "laws of semantic change" — and practical applications, such as information retrieval in longitudinal text archives.
Author: Julia Bacskai-Atkari Publisher: Language Science Press ISBN: 3961100837 Category : English language Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
This book provides a new analysis for the syntax of comparatives, focusing on various deletion phenomena affecting the subclause. In particular, the proposed account shows that Comparative Deletion is merely a surface phenomenon that can be drawn back to the overtness of the comparative operator and the availability of lower copies of a movement chain, and it is thus subject to both language-internal and cross-linguistic variation. The main focus of the book is on English, yet other languages are also discussed for comparative purposes, with the aim of showing what the idiosyncratic properties of English comparatives are.
Author: Wout Jac. van Bekkum Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9027298815 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
The aim of this study is a comparative analysis of the role of semantics in the linguistic theory of four grammatical traditions, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic. If one compares the organization of linguistic theory in various grammatical traditions, it soon turns out that there are marked differences in the way they define the place of ‘semantics’ within the theory. In some traditions, semantics is formally excluded from linguistic theory, and linguists do not express any opinion as to the relationship between syntactic and semantic analysis. In other traditions, the whole basis of linguistic theory is semantically orientated, and syntactic features are always analysed as correlates of a semantic structure. However, even in those traditions, in which semantics falls explicitly or implicitly outside the scope of linguistics, there may be factors forcing linguists to occupy themselves with the semantic dimension of language. One important factor seems to be the presence of a corpus of revealed/sacred texts: the necessity to formulate hermeneutic rules for the interpretation of this corpus brings semantics in through the back door.
Author: James R. Hurford Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521289498 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
Introduces the major elements of semantics in a simple, step-by-step fashion. Sections of explanation and examples are followed by practice exercises with answers and comment provided.
Author: Eran Asoulin
Author: Paul Canart
Author: Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru
Author: Juhani Härmä
Author: Paul R. Kroeger
Author: Eran Asoulin
Author: Carsten Levisen
Author: Nina Tahmasebi
Author: Julia Bacskai-Atkari 
Author: Wout Jac. van Bekkum
Author: James R. Hurford