Download or read book Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing written by Roberto G. de Almeida and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-08 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Verbs play an important role in how events, states and other “happenings” are mentally represented and how they are expressed in natural language. Besides their central role in linguistics, verbs have long been prominent topics of research in analytic philosophy—mostly on the nature of events and predicate-argument structure—and a topic of empirical investigation in psycholinguistics, mostly on argument structure and its role in sentence comprehension. More recently, the representation of verb meaning has been gaining momentum as a topic of research in other cognitive science branches, notably neuroscience and the psychology of concepts. The present volume is an expression of this recent surge in the investigation of verb structure and meaning from the interdisciplinary perspective of cognitive science, with up-to-date contributions by theoretical linguists, philosophers, psycholinguists and neuroscientists. The volume presents new theoretical and empirical studies on how verb structure and verb meaning are represented, how they are processed during language comprehension, how they are acquired, and how they are neurologically implemented. Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing is a reflection of the recent collaboration between the disciplines that constitute cognitive science, bringing new empirical data and theoretical insights on a key element of natural language and conceptualization.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Mental Lexicon written by Anna Papafragou and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-07 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together the latest research from leading scholars on the mental lexicon - the representation of language in the mind/brain at the level of individual words and meaningful sub-word units. In recent years, the study of words as mental objects has grown rapidly across several fields, including linguistics, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, education, and cognitive science. This comprehensive collection spans multiple disciplines, topics, theories, and methods to highlight important advances in the study of the mental lexicon, identify areas of debate, and inspire innovation in the field from present and future generations of scholars. The book is divided into three parts. Part I presents modern linguistic and cognitive theories of how the mind/brain represents words at the phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels. This part also discusses broad architectural issues pertaining to the internal organization of the lexicon, the relation between words and concepts, and the role of compositionality. Part II examines how children learn the form and meaning of words in their native language, bridging learner- and environment-driven contributions and taking into account variability across both individual learners and communities. Chapters in the final part explore how the mental lexicon contributes to language use during listening, speaking, and conversation, and includes perspectives from bilingualism, sign languages, and disorders of lexical access and production.

Download or read book Concepts in the Brain written by David Kemmerer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most native speakers of English, the meanings of ordinary words like "blue," "cup," "stumble," and "carve" seem quite natural and self-evident. It turns out, however, that they are far from universal, as shown by recent research in the discipline known as semantic typology. To be sure, the roughly 6,500 languages around the world do have many similarities in the sorts of concepts they encode. But they also vary greatly in numerous ways, such as how they partition particular conceptual domains, how they map those domains onto syntactic categories, which distinctions they force speakers to habitually attend to, and how deeply they weave certain notions into the fabric of their grammar. Although these insights from semantic typology have had a major impact on the field of psycholinguistics, they have been mostly neglected by the branch of cognitive neuroscience that studies how concepts are represented, organized, and processed in our brains. In Concepts in the Brain, David Kemmerer exposes this oversight and demonstrates its significance. He argues that as research on the neural substrates of semantic knowledge moves forward, it should, to the extent possible, expand its purview to embrace the broad spectrum of cross-linguistic variation in the lexical and grammatical representation of meaning. Otherwise, it will never be able to achieve a truly comprehensive, pan-human account of the cortical underpinnings of concepts. Richly illustrated and written in an accessible interdisciplinary style, the book begins by elaborating the different perspectives on concepts that currently exist in the parallel fields of semantic typology and cognitive neuroscience. It then shows how a synthesis of these approaches can lead to a more unified and inclusive understanding of several domains of concrete meaning--specifically, objects, actions, and spatial relations. Finally, it explores a number of intriguing and controversial issues involving the interplay between language, cognition, and consciousness.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Semantics written by Nick Riemer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Semantics provides a broad and state-of-the-art survey of this field, covering semantic research at both word and sentence level. It presents a synoptic view of the most important areas of semantic investigation, including contemporary methodologies and debates, and indicating possible future directions in the field. Written by experts from around the world, the 29 chapters cover key issues and approaches within the following areas: meaning and conceptualisation; meaning and context; lexical semantics; semantics of specific phenomena; development, change and variation. The Routledge Handbook of Semantics is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students working in this area.

Download or read book Concepts Frames and Cascades in Semantics Cognition and Ontology written by Sebastian Löbner and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-28 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book presents novel theoretical, empirical and experimental work exploring the nature of mental representations that support natural language production and understanding, and other manifestations of cognition. One fundamental question raised in the text is whether requisite knowledge structures can be adequately modeled by means of a uniform representational format, and if so, what exactly is its nature. Frames are a key topic covered which have had a strong impact on the exploration of knowledge representations in artificial intelligence, psychology and linguistics; cascades are a novel development in frame theory. Other key subject areas explored are: concepts and categorization, the experimental investigation of mental representation, as well as cognitive analysis in semantics. This book is of interest to students, researchers, and professionals working on cognition in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology.

Download or read book On Concepts Modules and Language written by Roberto G. De Almeida and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the landmarks of the cognitive revolution? What are the core topics of modern cognitive science? Where is cognitive science heading to? Leading cognitive scientists--Chomsky, Pylyshyn, Gallistel, and others--examine their own work in relation to one of cognitive science's most influential and polemical figures: Jerry Fodor.

Download or read book Perspectives on Agrammatism written by Roelien Bastiaanse and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agrammatic aphasia (agrammatism), resulting from brain damage to regions of the brain involved in language processing, affects grammatical aspects of language. Therefore, research examining language breakdown (and recovery) patterns in agrammatism is of great interest and importance to linguists, neurolinguists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, psycholinguists and speech and language pathologists from all over the world. Research in agrammatism, studied across languages and from different perspectives, provides information about the grammatical structures that are affected by brain damage, their nature, and how language (and the brain) recovers from brain damage. The chapters in this book focus on the symptoms that arise in agrammatic aphasia at the lexical, morphological and sentence level and address these impairments from neurolinguistic, neuropsychological and neurological perspectives. Special attention is given to methods for assessment and treatment of agrammatism and to the neurobiological changes that can result from the treatments. Perspectives on Agrammatism provides an up-to-date overview of research that has been done over the past two decades. With contributions from the most influential aphasiologists from Europe and the United States, it provides an indispensable reference for students and academics in the field of language disorders.

Download or read book Cognitive Neuroscience of Language written by David Kemmerer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 1520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cognitive Neuroscience of Language provides an up-to-date, wide-ranging, and pedagogically practical survey of the most important developments in this exciting field. It guides students through all of the major areas of investigation, beginning with the fundamental aspects of brain structure and function and then following with key topics such as classic and progressive aphasia syndromes; speech perception and production; the meanings of object nouns, action verbs, and abstract words; the formulation and comprehension of complex expressions, including grammatically inflected words, complete sentences, and entire stories; and several other domains of neurolinguistic research, including reading and writing, sign language, and the bilingual brain. Drawing heavily on prominent theoretical models, the core chapters illustrate how such frameworks are supported, and sometimes challenged, by experiments employing diverse brain mapping techniques. This edition has been thoroughly updated throughout, and now includes a dedicated chapter on the neural substrates of bilingualism. Chapters have been revised to reflect the most salient developments in the field, and the book has undergone a thoughtful restructure to mirror course teaching. While the study of language can be challenging, the text has been written accessibly and requires no previous knowledge of either neuroscience or linguistics and includes definitions of technical terms and explanations of important principles from both disciplines along the way. Accompanied by online resources for students and instructors, it is an essential companion for graduate or upper-level undergraduate students.

Download or read book Verbs written by William Croft and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a model of event structure for the analysis of aspectual constructions and argument structure constructions in English and other languages. Representing the culmination of two decades of the author's research and thought, it explores the contribution of semantics to the argument-structure and tense-aspect constructions in which verbs occur, integrating the aspectual and causal structures of events. The argument is framed in relation to current and previous scholarship and takes full account of diachronic and usage-based research. Professor Croft's analysis encompasses the full range of English verb classes and is enriched throughout by a strong typological dimension: the syntax and semantics of verbs are always seen from a crosslinguistic perspective. This allows the author to demonstrate the generality of his theory and to show how it breaks new ground in predicting and explaining linguistic facts. The subject of the book is at the heart of current work in syntax and semantics and the interface between them. It will interest semanticists, syntacticians and cognitive and functional-typological linguists. The transparency of the author's style and his avoidance of theory-dependent constructs will extend its appeal to linguists of all theoretical stripes.

Download or read book Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics written by Gerhard Preyer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of meaning in language embraces a diverse range of problems and methods. Philosophers think through the relationship between language and the world; linguists document speakers' knowledge of meaning; psychologists investigate the mechanisms of understanding and production. Up through the early 2000s, these investigations were generally compartmentalized: indeed, researchers often regarded both the subject-matter and the methods of other disciplines with skepticism. Since then, however, there has been a sea change in the field, enabling researchers increasingly to synthesize the perspectives of philosophy, linguistics and psychology and to energize all the fields with rich new intellectual perspectives that facilitate meaningful interchange. The time is right for a broader exploration and reflection on the status and problems of semantics as an interdisciplinary enterprise, in light of a decade of challenging and successful research in this area. Taking as its starting-point Lepore and Stone's 2014 book Imagination and Convention, this volume aims to reconcile different methodological perspectives while refocusing semanticists on new problems where integrative work will find the broadest and most receptive audience.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Theoretical and Experimental Sign Language Research written by Josep Quer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 853 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Theoretical and Experimental Sign Language Research bridges the divide between theoretical and experimental approaches to provide an up-to-date survey of key topics in sign language research. With 29 chapters written by leading and emerging scholars from around the world, this Handbook covers the following key areas: On the theoretical side, all crucial aspects of sign language grammar studied within formal frameworks such as Generative Grammar; On the experimental side, theoretical accounts are supplemented by experimental evidence gained in psycho- and neurolinguistic studies; On the descriptive side, the main phenomena addressed in the reviewed scholarship are summarized in a way that is accessible to readers without previous knowledge of sign languages. Each chapter features an introduction, an overview of existing research, and a critical assessment of hypotheses and findings. The Routledge Handbook of Theoretical and Experimental Sign Language Research is key reading for all advanced students and researchers working at the intersection of sign language research, linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics.

Download or read book Perspectives on Abstract Concepts written by Marianna Bolognesi and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human language is the most powerful communication system that evolution has produced. Within this system, we can talk about things we can physically see, such as cats and tables, but also about more abstract entities, such as theories and feelings. But how are these abstract concepts grounded in human cognition and represented in the mind? How are they constructed in language? And how are they used in natural communication settings? This book addresses these questions through a collection of studies that relate to various theoretical frameworks, ranging from Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Words as Social Tools. Contributors investigate how abstract concepts are grounded in the mind, represented in language, and used in verbal discourse. This richness is matched by a range of methods used throughout the volume, from neuroimaging to computational modeling, and from behavioral experiments to corpus analyses.

Download or read book The Science of Meaning written by Derek Ball and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By creating certain marks on paper, or by making certain sounds-breathing past a moving tongue-or by articulation of hands and bodies, language users can give expression to their mental lives. With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning. This fact can be quite mystifying, yet a science of linguistic meaning-semantics-has emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Semantics is the study of meaning. But what exactly is "meaning"? What is the exact target of semantic theory? Much of the early work in natural language semantics was accompanied by extensive reflection on the aims of semantic theory, and the form a theory must take to meet those aims. But this meta-theoretical reflection has not kept pace with recent theoretical innovations. This volume re-addresses these questions concerning the foundations of natural language semantics in light of the current state-of-the-art in semantic theorising.

Download or read book Explorations of the Syntax Semantics Interface written by Jens Fleischhauer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles in this volume present original research on the encoding of meaning in a variety of constructions and languages. Many of the contributions take the framework of Role and Reference Grammar as a point of reference, either by applying it to the analysis of linguistic data or by discussing, extending, and challenging some of its assumptions. The topics of the articles range from general questions concerning the relation of meaning and its syntactic realization to the study of specific grammatical phenomena in a number of typologically diverse languages, including Yucatec Maya, Kabardian, Tagalog, Murik-Kopar, Avatime, Whitesands, Tundra Yukaghir, and various Indo-European languages. The articles will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the interface between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. This series 'Studies in Language and Cognition' explores issues of mental representation, linguistic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center `The structure of representations in language, cognition and science' (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts.

Download or read book Words in the World written by Gary Libben and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2023-10-16 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Psychology in Action written by Karen R. Huffman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-11-13 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychology in Action, 12e is a comprehensive introductory Psychology product that fosters active learning and provides a wealth of tools that empower students to master and make connections between the key concepts. Students will leave the classroom with a solid foundation in basic psychology that will serve them in their daily lives no matter what their chosen field of study and career path.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Event Structure written by Robert Truswell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook deals with research into the nature of events, and how we use language to describe events. The study of event structure over the past 60 years has been one of the most successful areas of lexical semantics, uniting insights from morphology and syntax, lexical and compositional semantics, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence to develop insightful theories of events and event descriptions. This volume provides accessible introductions to major topics and ongoing debates in event structure research, exploring what events are, how we perceive them, how we reason with them, and the role they play in the organization of grammar and discourse. The chapters are divided into four parts: the first covers metaphysical issues related to events; the second is concerned with the relationship between event structure and grammar; the third is a series of crosslinguistic case studies; and the fourth deals with links to cognitive science and artificial intelligence more broadly. The book is strongly interdisciplinary in nature, with insights from linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and computer science, and will appeal to a wide range of researchers and students from advanced undergraduate level upwards.