Download or read book Reference Form and Discourse Patterns written by Jennifer E. Arnold and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora written by Karin Aijmer and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-04-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together a number of empirical studies that use corpora to study discourse patterns in speech and writing. It explores new trends in the area of text and discourse characterized by the alliance between text linguistics and areas such as corpus linguistics, genre analysis, literary stylistics and cross-linguistic studies. The contributions to the volume show how established corpora can be used to ask a number of new questions about the interface between speech and writing, the relation between grammar and discourse, academic discourse, cohesive markers, stylistic devices such as metaphor, deixis and non-verbal communication. The corpora used for text-analysis can also be tailor-made for the study of particular genres such as journal article abstracts, lectures, e-mailing list messages, headlines and titles. A recent development is to bring in contrastive data from bilingual corpora to show what is language-specific in the organization of the text.

Download or read book Meaning Reference and Discourse Patterns written by Petr Sgall and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Reference written by Jeanette K. Gundel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ability to produce and understand referring expressions is basic to human language use and human cognition. Reference comprises the ability to think of and represent objects (both real and imagined/fictional), to indicate to others which of these objects we are talking about, and to determine what others are talking about when they use a nominal expression. The articles in this volume are concerned with some of the central themes and challenges in research on reference within the cognitive sciences - philosophy (including philosophy of language and mind, logic, and formal semantics), theoretical and computational linguistics, and cognitive psychology. The papers address four basic questions: What is reference? What is the appropriate analysis of different referring forms, such as definite descriptions? How is reference resolved? and How do speaker/writers select appropriate referring forms, such as pronouns vs. full noun phrases, demonstrative vs. personal pronouns, and overt vs. null/zero pronominal forms? Some of the papers assume and build on existing theories, such as Centering Theory and the Givenness Hierarchy framework; others propose their own models of reference understanding or production. The essays examine reference from a number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, informed by different research traditions and employing different methodologies. While the contributors to the volume were primarily trained in one of the four represented disciplines-computer science, linguistics, philosophy and psychology, and use methodologies typical of that discipline, each of them bridges more than one discipline in their methodology and/or their approach.

Download or read book Minimal reference written by Ritva Laury and published by Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. This book was released on 2005-06-23 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents some of the most recent research on Finnish and Estonian pronouns and other minimal forms of reference. The articles deal with features particular to the pronoun systems of Finnic languages, such as logophoricity and the use of demonstratives for human referents, as well as other topics of current interest in research into the nature of pronominal reference, in particular the contextual, interactive and grammatical factors which influence the use and interpretation of pronouns. An international group of authors approach these questions from several theoretical frameworks including psycholinguistics, syntax, conversation analysis and discourse analysis. The volume is the first collection of articles on this topic published in English. Authors include Outi Duvallon, Marja Etel채m채ki, P채ivi Juvonen, Elsi Kaiser, Lea Laitinen, Renate Pajusalu, Eeva-Leena Sepp채nen, and the editor, Ritva Laury.

Download or read book Perspectives on Linguistic Structure and Context written by Stacey Katz Bourns and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-03-15 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this tribute to Knud Lambrecht, a pioneer of Information Structure, a diverse group of scholars examines the intersection of syntax, discourse, pragmatics, and semantics. The six chapters in the first section of the volume consider issues of grammar with new theoretical and applied insights, pertaining to grammatical constructions such as left dislocation, unaccusatives, null complements, and passives. While the first half of the book presents studies involving a range of languages from Russian to Irish to Italian, the second section is dedicated to papers focused on French. These five chapters feature the application of Construction Grammar and/or Information Structure frameworks to prosody and second language processing, as well as to several distinctive spoken French constructions: clefts, left dislocations, and interrogatives. Collectively, this book offers substantial reading for those interested in the juncture of structure and context, notably a critical take on the important legacy of a preeminent linguist.

Download or read book Is the Language Faculty Non Linguistic written by Umberto Ansaldo and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A line of research in cognitive science over several decades has been dedicated to finding an innate, language-specific cognitive system, a faculty which allows human infants to acquire languages natively without formal instruction and within short periods of time. In recent years, this search has attracted significant controversy in cognitive science generally, and in the language sciences specifically. Some maintain that the search has had meaningful results, though there are different views as to what the findings are: ranging from the view that there is a rich and rather specific set of principles, to the idea that the contents of the language faculty are - while specifiable - in fact extremely minimal. But other researchers rigorously oppose the continuation of this search, arguing that decades of effort have turned up nothing. The fact remains that the proposal of a language-specific faculty was made for a good reason, namely as an attempt to solve the vexing puzzle of language in our species. Much work has been developing to address this, and specifically, to look for ways to characterize the language faculty as an emergent phenomenon; i.e., not as a dedicated, language-specific system, but as the emergent outcome of a set of uniquely human but not specifically linguistic factors, in combination. A number of theoretical and empirical approaches are being developed in order to account for the great puzzles of language - language processing, language usage, language acquisition, the nature of grammar, and language change and diversification. This research topic aims at reviewing and exploring these recent developments and establishing bridges between these young frameworks, as well as with the traditions that have come before. The goal of this Research Topic is to focus on current developments in what many regard as a paradigm shift in the language sciences. In this Research Topic, we want to ask: If current explicit proposals for an innate, dedicated faculty for language are not supported by data or arguments, how can we solve the problems that UG was proposed to solve? Is it possible to solve the puzzles of language in our species with an appeal to causes that are not specifically linguistic?

Download or read book The Processing and Acquisition of Reference written by Edward A. Gibson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-03-25 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How people refer to objects in the world, how people comprehend reference, and how children acquire an understanding of and an ability to use reference. This volume brings together contributions by prominent researchers in the fields of language processing and language acquisition on topics of common interest: how people refer to objects in the world, how people comprehend such referential expressions, and how children acquire the ability to refer and to understand reference. The contributors first discuss issues related to children's acquisition and processing of reference, then consider evidence of adults' processing of reference from eye-tracking methods (the visual-world paradigm) and from corpora and reading experiments. They go on to discuss such topics as how children resolve ambiguity, children's difficulty in understanding coreference, the use of eye movements to physical objects to measure the accessibility of different referents, the uses of probabilistic and pragmatic information in language comprehension, antecedent accessibility and salience in reference, and neuropsychological data from the event-related potential (ERP) recording literature.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Eye Movements written by Simon Liversedge and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-08-18 with total page 1048 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past few years, there has been an explosion of eye movement research in cognitive science and neuroscience. This has been due to the availability of 'off the shelf' eye trackers, along with software to allow the easy acquisition and analysis of eye movement data. Accompanying this has been a realisation that eye movement data can be informative about many different aspects of perceptual and cognitive processing. Eye movements have been used to examine the visual and cognitive processes underpinning a much broader range of human activities, including, language production, dialogue, human computer interaction, driving behaviour, sporting performance, and emotional states. Finally, in the past thirty years, there have been real advances in our understanding of the neural processes that underpin eye movement behaviour. The Oxford Handbook of Eye Movements provides the first comprehensive review of the entire field of eye movement research. In over fifty chapters, it reviews the developments that have so far taken place, the areas actively being researched, and looks at how the field is likely to devlop in the coming years. The first section considers historical and background material, before moving onto section 2 on the neural basis of eye movements. The third and fourth sections looks at visual cognition and eye movements and eye movement pathology and development. The final sections consider eye movements and reading and language processing and eye movements. Bringing together cutting edge research from and international team of leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and vision researchers, this book is the definitive reference work in this field.

Download or read book Anaphora Processing written by António Branco and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-27 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anaphora processing is a central topic in the study of natural language and has long been the object of research in a wide range of disciplines. The correct interpretation of anaphora has also become increasingly important for real-world natural language processing applications, including machine translation, automatic abstracting, information extraction and question answering. This volume provides a unique overview of the processing of anaphora from a multi- and inter-disciplinary angle. It will be of interest and practical use to readers from fields as diverse as theoretical linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, computer science, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, human language technology, psycholinguistics, cognitive science and translation studies. The readership includes but is not limited to university lecturers, researchers, postgraduate and senior undergraduate students.

Download or read book Asymmetries between Language Production and Comprehension written by Petra Hendriks and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-07-31 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asserts that language is a signaling system rather than a code, based in part on such research as the finding that 5-year-old English and Dutch children use pronouns correctly in their own utterances, but often fail to interpret these forms correctly when used by someone else. Emphasizing the unique and sometimes competing demands of listener and speaker, the author examines resulting asymmetries between production and comprehension. The text offers examples of the interpretation of word order and pronouns by listeners, and word order freezing and referential choice by speakers. It is explored why the usual symmetry breaks down in children but also sometimes in adults. Gathering contemporary insights from theoretical linguistic research, psycholinguistic studies and computational modeling, Asymmetries between Language Production and Comprehension presents a unified explanation of this phenomenon. “Through a lucid, comprehensive review of acquisition studies on reference-related phenomena, Petra Hendriks builds a striking case for the pervasiveness of asymmetries in comprehension/production. In her view, listeners systematically misunderstand what they hear, and speakers systematically fail to prevent such misunderstandings. She argues that linguistic theory should take stock of current psycholinguistic and developmental evidence on optionality and ambiguity, and recognize language as a signaling system. The arguments are compelling yet controversial: grammar does not specify a one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning; and the demands of the mapping task differ for listeners and speakers. Her proposal is formalized within optimality theory, but researchers working outside this framework will still find it of great interest. In the language-as-code vs. language-as-signal debate, Hendriks puts the ball firmly in the other court.” Ana Pérez-Leroux, University of Toronto, Canada

Download or read book Individual Differences in Anaphora Resolution written by Georgia Fotiadou and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individual Differences in Anaphora Resolution: Language and cognitive effects explores anaphora resolution from different perspectives, and investigates various aspects of the phenomenon, as contributions include research protocols that combine old and new experimental methodologies as well as theoretical and empirical approaches. A central theme across volume contributions are the multiple linguistic and extralinguistic factors that constrain anaphora resolution, its processing and acquisition by a variety of populations (children and adults, monolinguals, bilinguals and second language learners) as well as the mechanisms underlying anaphora resolution. Anaphora resolution constitutes an ideal environment to test the interaction between domain-general cognitive systems and domain-specific linguistic sub-routines, since variability in referential preferences is not related to binding constraints (an integral part of syntax per se) but is closely tied to processing (functional constraints) modulated by the integration of discourse-filtered information.

Download or read book The Social Origins of Language written by Robert M. Seyfarth and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How human language evolved from the need for social communication The origins of human language remain hotly debated. Despite growing appreciation of cognitive and neural continuity between humans and other animals, an evolutionary account of human language—in its modern form—remains as elusive as ever. The Social Origins of Language provides a novel perspective on this question and charts a new path toward its resolution. In the lead essay, Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney draw on their decades-long pioneering research on monkeys and baboons in the wild to show how primates use vocalizations to modulate social dynamics. They argue that key elements of human language emerged from the need to decipher and encode complex social interactions. In other words, social communication is the biological foundation upon which evolution built more complex language. Seyfarth and Cheney’s argument serves as a jumping-off point for responses by John McWhorter, Ljiljana Progovac, Jennifer E. Arnold, Benjamin Wilson, Christopher I. Petkov and Peter Godfrey-Smith, each of whom draw on their respective expertise in linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. Michael Platt provides an introduction, Seyfarth and Cheney a concluding essay. Ultimately, The Social Origins of Language offers thought-provoking viewpoints on how human language evolved.

Download or read book Weak Referentiality written by Ana Aguilar-Guevara and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together studies in the domain of weak referentiality, the phenomenon that a definite or indefinite noun phrase lacks its usual referential force. Several papers investigate syntactic or semantic properties of indefinite noun phrases, such as modality, number neutrality, narrow scope, incorporation, predication, and case marking, and that in a range of languages (Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, German, Papiamentu, Russian). Other papers deal with weakly referential definite noun phrases in various languages (Basque, Dutch, English, French) involving scrambling, modification, possession, and accessibility. The papers demonstrate a range of empirical methods and theoretical models. This volume will not only be of interest to researchers and students in syntax and semantics, but also in psycholinguistics and language typology.

Download or read book Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English written by Günter Rohdenburg and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What factors influence the choice between alternative grammatical structures such as the following: a lit / a lighted cigarette, more full / fuller of convincing arguments, the main thesis of the book / the book's main thesis, take hostage a group of 15 holiday makers / take a group of 15 holidaymakers hostage, conceding that the argument is convincing / conceding the argument to be convincing? This is the central issue explored in this volume, which contains a unique selection of innovative in-depth empirical studies written in a broadly functional framework. The factors investigated include the following: phonological influences (such as the principle of rhythmic alternation and optimal syllable structure), frequency, pervasive semantic and pragmatic aspects (including iconicity, markedness, grammaticalization and typological tendencies), information structure, processing complexity and horror aequi (the avoidance of identity effects).

Download or read book Preferred Argument Structure written by John W. Du Bois and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-09-29 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preferred Argument Structure offers a profound insight into the relationship between language use and grammatical structure. In his original publication on Preferred Argument Structure, Du Bois (1987) demonstrated the power of this perspective by using it to explain the origins of ergativity and ergative marking systems. Since this work, the general applicability of Preferred Argument Structure has been demonstrated in studies of language after language. In this collection, the authors move beyond verifying Preferred Argument Structure as a property of a given language. They use the methodology to reveal more subtle aspects of the patterns, for example, to look across languages, diachronically or synchronically, to examine particular grammatical relations, and to examine special populations or particular genres. This volume will appeal to linguists interested in the relationship of pragmatics and grammar generally, in the typology of grammatical relations, and in explanations derived from data- and corpus-based approaches to analysis.

Download or read book The Expression of Information Structure written by Manfred Krifka and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-08-31 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information structure deals with the linguistic forms and techniques that support the integration of what is said into the current informational and attentional state of the addressee. This shows in categories like topic-comment structuring, focus to highlight expressions, marking of givenness and of presupposed information, and ways to indicate that the information provided is restricted. The book relates infor-mation structure to theoretical models of grammar, to computation and modelling and brings together what is known about the expression of information structure in human language with regard to its empirical investigation, its psycholinguistic aspects and the acquisition of information structure. Since the need to integrate what is said into the informational and attentional state of the addressee is central to all human communication, it is not surprising that all natural languages have developed devices to express information structural cate-gories. To illustrate this, the book also provides concrete and theory independent descriptions of the information structural encoding strategies of individual languages of different types . The book can be used as a textbook appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses; it also provides information for linguists that are not specialists in the field.