Download or read book The Evolution of Case Grammar written by Remi van Trijp and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so." This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Download or read book The Evolution of Case Grammar written by Remi Van Trijp and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so.

Download or read book The evolution of case grammar written by Remi van Trijp and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so.

Download or read book The Evolution of Grammar written by Joan Bybee and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994-11-15 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joan Bybee and her colleagues present a new theory of the evolution of grammar that links structure and meaning in a way that directly challenges most contemporary versions of generative grammar. This study focuses on the use and meaning of grammatical markers of tense, aspect, and modality and identifies a universal set of grammatical categories. The authors demonstrate that the semantic content of these categories evolves gradually and that this process of evolution is strikingly similar across unrelated languages. Through a survey of seventy-six languages in twenty-five different phyla, the authors show that the same paths of change occur universally and that movement along these paths is in one direction only. This analysis reveals that lexical substance evolves into grammatical substance through various mechanisms of change, such as metaphorical extension and the conventionalization of implicature. Grammaticization is always accompanied by an increase in frequency of the grammatical marker, providing clear evidence that language use is a major factor in the evolution of synchronic language states. The Evolution of Grammar has important implications for the development of language and for the study of cognitive processes in general.

Download or read book Modern Grammars of Case written by John Mathieson Anderson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-22 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses fundamental issues in linguistic theory, including the relation between formal and cognitive approaches, the autonomy of syntax, the content of universal grammar, and the value of generative and functional approaches to grammar. It focuses on the grammar of case relations, signalled by morphological case, prepositions, and word order. Part I offers a critical history of modern grammars of case, focussing on the last four decades and setting this in the context ofearlier, including ancient, developments. The subjects considered include the evolution of ideas concerning deep structure and semantic and grammatical relations, and arguments for the maintenance of the traditional central position of case in the grammar. In parts II and III Professor Andersonexamines the category of case and central unresolved issues in the grammar of case. The latter include questions relating to the idea of an ontologically-based grammar, particularly the degree to which syntactic categories and relationships are grounded in meaning, and the notion of linguistic creativity. This involves a consideration of the way in which cases may be identified and whether their distribution is determined through semantics. The book sheds new light on the interactions betweenmeaning and grammar and on the structure and development of lexical and grammatical systems. The argument and its far-reaching consequences will be of wide interest to linguists, philosophers and others seeking to understand the workings of language.

Download or read book The Evolution of Chinese Grammar written by Yuzhi Shi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chinese language has the longest well-documented history among all human languages, making it an invaluable resource for studying how languages develop and change through time. Based on a twenty-year long research project, this pioneering book is the English version of an award-winning study originally published in Chinese. It provides an evolutionary perspective on the history of Chinese grammar, tracing its development from its thirteenth-Century BC origins to the present day. It investigates all the major changes in the history of the language within contemporary linguistic frameworks, and illustrates these with a wide range of examples taken from every stage in the language's development, showing how the author's findings are relevant to contemporary descriptive, theoretical, and historical linguistics. Shedding light on the essential properties of Chinese and, ultimately, language in general, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students of Asian linguistics, historical linguistics and syntactic theory.

Download or read book Substance based Grammar The Ongoing Work of John Anderson written by Roger Böhm and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-12-12 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions of this volume centre around the (ongoing) work of John Anderson, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh and Fellow of the British Academy, who, with detailed studies in phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax as well as careful discussions of historical and methodological issues in linguistics at large, has been and still is the central figure in the development of a theory of language structure driven by the assumption of structural analogy between syntax and phonology and firmly grounded in the long-standing tradition of substantively based grammar behind it. The first contribution is a lengthy ‘interview’, based on a series of written interchanges by József Andor with John Anderson, which focuses on the development of Anderson’s work and its relation to contemporaneous developments in linguistics. The following eight contributions, centring on general issues concerning the historiography of localism, the lexicon, meaning and syntax and, finally, phonology, deal with applications, extensions, answers to criticism and philosophical context of Anderson’s work.

Download or read book Generative Grammar written by Robert Freidin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generative Grammar presents a substantial contribution to the field of linguistics in drawing together for the first time the author's most significant work on the theory of generative grammar. The essays collected here display Freidin's role in moving the theory forward in terms of new proposals, and analyse the efforts to understand the evolution and history of the theory by careful investigation of how and why it has changed over the years.

Download or read book The Unfolding of Language written by Guy Deutscher and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blending the spirit of Eats, Shoots & Leaves with the science of The Language Instinct, an original inquiry into the development of that most essential-and mysterious-of human creations: Language "Language is mankind's greatest invention-except, of course, that it was never invented." So begins linguist Guy Deutscher's enthralling investigation into the genesis and evolution of language. If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of "man throw spear," how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced degrees of meaning? Drawing on recent groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving us fresh insight into how language emerges, evolves, and decays. He traces the evolution of linguistic complexity from an early "Me Tarzan" stage to such elaborate single-word constructions as the Turkish sehirlilestiremediklerimizdensiniz ("you are one of those whom we couldn't turn into a town dweller"). Arguing that destruction and creation in language are intimately entwined, Deutscher shows how these processes are continuously in operation, generating new words, new structures, and new meanings. As entertaining as it is erudite, The Unfolding of Language moves nimbly from ancient Babylonian to American idiom, from the central role of metaphor to the staggering triumph of design that is the Semitic verb, to tell the dramatic story and explain the genius behind a uniquely human faculty.

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax written by Marcel den Dikken and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Case written by Andrej Malchukov and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook provides a comprehensive account of current research on case and the morphological and syntactic phenomena associated with it. Scholars from all over the world provide overviews of current theoretical, typological, diachronic, and psycholinguistic research and assess cross-linguistic work on case and case-systems.

Download or read book Why Only Us written by Robert C. Berwick and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

Download or read book The Grammar Network written by Holger Diessel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a dynamic network model of grammar that explains how linguistic structure is shaped by language use.

Download or read book The Evolution of Englishes written by Sarah Buschfeld and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-part volume provides a collection of 27 linguistic studies and contributions that shed light on the evolution of different Englishes world-wide (varieties, learner Englishes, dialects, creoles) from a broad spectrum of different perspectives, including both synchronic and diachronic approaches. What makes the volume unique is that it is the first-ever contribution to the field which includes a section exclusively commited towards testing, discussing and refining Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model against recent realities of English world-wide (Part 1). These realities include a wide variety of case studies ranging from regions (socio)linguistically as diverse as South Africa, the Phillipines, Cyprus or Germany. Part 2 goes beyond the Dynamic Model and offers both empirical and theoretical perspectives on the evolution of World Englishes. In doing so, it provides contributions with a theoretical focus on the topic as well as cross-varietal accounts; it sheds light on individual Englishes from different geographical regions and offers new perspectives on “old” varieties.

Download or read book Complexity in Language written by Salikoko S. Mufwene and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about dynamical, social-interactional aspects of the emergence of complexity in language, explained by linguists, cognitivists, and modelers.

Download or read book Handbook of Grammatical Evolution written by Conor Ryan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook offers a comprehensive treatise on Grammatical Evolution (GE), a grammar-based Evolutionary Algorithm that employs a function to map binary strings into higher-level structures such as programs. GE's simplicity and modular nature make it a very flexible tool. Since its introduction almost twenty years ago, researchers have applied it to a vast range of problem domains, including financial modelling, parallel programming and genetics. Similarly, much work has been conducted to exploit and understand the nature of its mapping scheme, triggering additional research on everything from different grammars to alternative mappers to initialization. The book first introduces GE to the novice, providing a thorough description of GE along with historical key advances. Two sections follow, each composed of chapters from international leading researchers in the field. The first section concentrates on analysis of GE and its operation, giving valuable insight into set up and deployment. The second section consists of seven chapters describing radically different applications of GE. The contributions in this volume are beneficial to both novices and experts alike, as they detail the results and researcher experiences of applying GE to large scale and difficult problems. Topics include: • Grammar design • Bias in GE • Mapping in GE • Theory of disruption in GE · Structured GE · Geometric semantic GE · GE and semantics · Multi- and Many-core heterogeneous parallel GE · Comparing methods to creating constants in GE · Financial modelling with GE · Synthesis of parallel programs on multi-cores · Design, architecture and engineering with GE · Computational creativity and GE · GE in the prediction of glucose for diabetes · GE approaches to bioinformatics and system genomics · GE with coevolutionary algorithms in cybersecurity · Evolving behaviour trees with GE for platform games · Business analytics and GE for the prediction of patient recruitment in multicentre clinical trials

Download or read book Generative Grammar written by Robert Freidin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generative Grammar presents a substantial contribution to the field of linguistics in drawing together for the first time the author's most significant work on the theory of generative grammar. The essays collected here display Freidin's role in moving the theory forward in terms of new proposals, and analyse the efforts to understand the evolution and history of the theory by careful investigation of how and why it has changed over the years.