Download or read book Arbitrariness and Complex Signs written by Tilo Voltz and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Leipzig (Institut für Anglistik), course: Motivation and Arbitrariness in the English Language, 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The following essay wants to draw attention to the relation between motivation and ar-bitrariness within complex linguistic signs. Modern linguistics tries to establish motivation within the language system and by this often seems to negotiate arbitrariness. Bolinger claimed in 1980: "Arbitrary and conventional is a fitting description of distinctive sounds, less so of words, even less of sentences, and beyond that scarcely fits at all" (Fischer & Nänny, 1999, p. xxi). Dirven and Verspoor proclaim that "most of the complex forms of lan-guage...are...not arbitrary, but transparent or motivated" (Dirven & Verspoor, p. 21). Motivation is used to construct convincing explanations for sometimes mystified phe-nomena in a language. Motivated by C.S. Peirce's sign system, linguistic signs are recently moved from a box signed 'symbol' into a box signed 'icon'. Language by this is meant to be a more or less predictable act, which is based on translucent regularities and ordering princi-ples. Structural similarities are the basis of motivation, which examines and proclaims ordeing principles in all spheres of the language: phonology, morphology, lexicon and semantics Motivation even obstructs the syntax of a language. Three main ideas underlie the principle of motivation: (i) sequential ordering, (ii) quan-tity and (iii) proximity. Simplified, the ideas can be summarized as follows: (i) arrangement of linguistic elements according to temporal events, like he opened the door and came in or veni, vidi, vici; (ii) the amount of meaning is reflected in the amount of linguistic form, like I go - I went - I had gone or a car - a green car - a green convertible; (iii) conceptual distance is reflected
Download or read book Arbitrariness and Complex Signs written by Tilo Voltz and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-12-23 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Leipzig (Institut für Anglistik), course: Motivation and Arbitrariness in the English Language, language: English, abstract: The following essay wants to draw attention to the relation between motivation and ar-bitrariness within complex linguistic signs. Modern linguistics tries to establish motivation within the language system and by this often seems to negotiate arbitrariness. Bolinger claimed in 1980: “Arbitrary and conventional is a fitting description of distinctive sounds, less so of words, even less of sentences, and beyond that scarcely fits at all“ (Fischer & Nänny, 1999, p. xxi). Dirven and Verspoor proclaim that “most of the complex forms of lan-guage...are...not arbitrary, but transparent or motivated“ (Dirven & Verspoor, p. 21). Motivation is used to construct convincing explanations for sometimes mystified phe-nomena in a language. Motivated by C.S. Peirce’s sign system, linguistic signs are recently moved from a box signed ‘symbol’ into a box signed ‘icon’. Language by this is meant to be a more or less predictable act, which is based on translucent regularities and ordering princi-ples. Structural similarities are the basis of motivation, which examines and proclaims ordeing principles in all spheres of the language: phonology, morphology, lexicon and semantics Motivation even obstructs the syntax of a language. Three main ideas underlie the principle of motivation: (i) sequential ordering, (ii) quan-tity and (iii) proximity. Simplified, the ideas can be summarized as follows: (i) arrangement of linguistic elements according to temporal events, like he opened the door and came in or veni, vidi, vici; (ii) the amount of meaning is reflected in the amount of linguistic form , like I go – I went – I had gone or a car – a green car – a green convertible; (iii) conceptual distance is reflected in formal distance, like I made her leave – I wanted her to leave – I wished she would leave. Essential to all three principles of iconicity is the kind of motivation they supply. What can be identified by sequential ordering, quantity and proximity is the formal and conceptual structure of a linguistic sign. Metaphorically speaking, motivation provides the bones (formal structure) and the muscles (conceptual structure) to complex linguistic sign. What motiva-tion can neither answer nor negotiate is the question of element’s arbitrariness, and why a certain concept is conventionally linked to a representing sound pattern. Moreover, it is the arbitrary character of simplex forms, which enables the understanding of complex signs. The aim of this paper is to raise an awareness for the inseparable connection of arbi-trariness and motivation in the analysis of complex signs. This aim will be achieved in three steps. First, the distinction between simplex and complex sign is focused, followed by a short introduction of the linguistic sign and a simplified understanding of language. Beyond, two important possibilities of analyzing linguistic signs and language are proposed: a sign inter-nal and a sign related analysis. In a second step, arbitrariness and motivation are correlated to the two processes of analyzing a language. In a last step, the thesis will be exemplified.
Download or read book The Motivated Syntax of Arbitrary Signs written by Erica C. Garcia and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This detailed study challenges the claim that syntax is arbitrary and autonomous, as well as the assumption that Spanish clitic clusters constitute grammaticalized units. Diverse--apparently unrelated--restrictions on clitic clustering in both simplex VP's and Accusative cum Infinitive structures are shown to be cognitively motivated, given the meaning of the individual clitics, and the compositional/interpretative routines those meanings motivate. The analysis accounts, in coherent and principled fashion, for the absolute non-occurrence of some clusters, and the interpretation-dependent acceptability of all remaining clitic combinations: cluster acceptability depends on the ease with which the given clitic combination can be processed to yield a congruent message; there is no point in combining clitics whose meanings preclude speedy processing of the cluster. The monograph goes beyond previous work on Spanish clitics in its wealth of data, the range of syntactic phenomena discussed, and its analytic scope.
Download or read book New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics written by Chiyo Nishida and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-08-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first of two volumes emanating from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at the University of Texas at Austin in February 2005. It features the keynote address delivered by Denis Bouchard on exaptation and linguistic explanation, as well as seventeen contributions by emerging and internationally recognized scholars of Spanish, French, Italian, as well as Rumanian. While the emphasis bears on formal analyses, the coverage is remarkably broad, as topics range from morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and language acquisition. Each article seeks to represent a new perspective on these topics and a variety of frameworks and concepts are exploited: distributive morphology, entailment theory, grammaticalization, information structure, left-periphery, polarity lattice, spatial individuation, thematic hierarchy, etc. This volume will challenge anyone interested in current issues in theoretical Romance Linguistics.
Download or read book Limiting the Iconic written by Ludovic De Cuypere and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-06-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iconicity has become a popular notion in contemporary linguistic research. This book is the first to present a synthesis of the vast amount of scholarship on linguistic iconicity which has been produced in the previous decades, ranging from iconicity in phonology and morpho-syntax to the role of iconicity in language change. An extensive analysis is provided of some basic but nonetheless fundamental questions relating to iconicity in language, including: what is a linguistic sign and how are linguistic signs different from signs in general? What is an iconic sign and how may iconicity be involved in language? How does iconicity pertain to the relation between language and cognition? This book offers a new and comprehensive theoretical framework for iconicity in language. It is argued that the linguistic sign is fundamentally arbitrary, but that iconicity may be involved on a secondary level, adding extra meaning to an utterance.
Download or read book Word Formation written by Peter O. Müller and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 974 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook comprises an in-depth presentation of the state of the art in word-formation. The five volumes contain 207 articles written by leading international scholars. The XVI chapters of the handbook provide the reader, in both general articles and individual studies, with a wide variety of perspectives: word-formation as a linguistic discipline (history of science, theoretical concepts), units and processes in word-formation, rules and restrictions, semantics and pragmatics, foreign word-formation, language planning and purism, historical word-formation, word-formation in language acquisition and aphasia, word-formation and language use, tools in word-formation research. The final chapter comprises 74 portraits of word-formation in the individual languages of Europe and offers an innovative perspective. These portraits afford the first overview of this kind and will prove useful for future typological research. This handbook will provide an essential reference for both advanced students and researchers in word-formation and related fields within linguistics.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology written by Rochelle Lieber and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology is intended as a companion volume to The Oxford Handbook of Compounding (OUP 2009) Written by distinguished scholars, its 41 chapters aim to provide a comprehensive and thorough overview of the study of derivational morphology. The handbook begins with an overview and a consideration of definitional matters, distinguishing derivation from inflection on the one hand and compounding on the other. From a formal perspective, the handbook treats affixation (prefixation, suffixation, infixation, circumfixation, etc.), conversion, reduplication, root and pattern and other templatic processes, as well as prosodic and subtractive means of forming new words. From a semantic perspective, it looks at the processes that form various types of adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs, as well as evaluatives and the rarer processes that form function words. The book also surveys derivation in fifteen language families that are widely dispersed in terms of both geographical location and typological characteristics.
Download or read book Elements of Semiology written by Roland Barthes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1968 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In his Course in General Linguistics, first published in 1916, Saussure postulated the existence of a general science of signs, or Semiology, of which linguistics would form only one part. Semiology, therefore aims to take in any system of signs, whatever their substance and limits; images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the complex associations of all these, which form the content of ritual, convention or public entertainment: these constitute, if not languages, at least systems of signification . . . The Elements here presented have as their sole aim the extraction from linguistics of analytical concepts which we think a priori to be sufficiently general to start semiological research on its way. In assembling them, it is not presupposed that they will remain intact during the course of research; nor that semiology will always be forced to follow the linguistic model closely. We are merely suggesting and elucidating a terminology in the hope that it may enable an initial (albeit provisional) order to be introduced into the heterogeneous mass of significant facts. In fact what we purport to do is furnish a principle of classification of the questions. These elements of semiology will therefore be grouped under four main headings borrowed from structural linguistics: I. Language and Speech; II. Signified and Signifier; III. Syntagm and System; IV. Denotation and Connotation."--Roland Barthes, from his Introduction
Download or read book The Explicit Animal written by R. Tallis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Criticizes attempts to "biologize" consciousness by explaining its origin in evolutionary terms and identifying mental phenomena with brain processes, to "computerize" it by identifying mind with the supposed computational activity of the brain, and to eliminate it by denying the reality of qualia.
Download or read book The Grammar of Words An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology written by Geert Booij and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-07-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geert Booij's popular textbook examines how words are formed, compounded, and inflected in different languages. It shows how, when, and why to use methods of morphological analysis and explains how morphology relates to syntax, phonology, and semantics. The author considers the universal characteristics of morphology and how these are reflected in the workings of mind. The revised edition has been revised and updated throughout; it has a full glossary and a new chapter on the field's most notorious problem: the status of the word. 'The Grammar of Words by Geert Booij covers a broad range of topics from structural questions to psycholinguistic issues and problems of language change. This introduction to morphology is thorough and accessible and, like other works by this renowned author, especially strong at showing the significance of empirical facts for theoretical reasoning.' Ingo Plag, University of Siegen 'A book that is fully comprehensive in its coverage as well as exemplary in its clarity, written by one of the major scholars of contemporary lexical theory.' Sergio Scalise, University of Bologna
Download or read book Limiting the Arbitrary written by John Earl Joseph and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that some aspects of language are 'natural', while others are arbitrary, artificial or derived, runs all through modern linguistics, from Chomsky's GB theory and Minimalist program and his concept of E- and I-language, to Greenberg's search for linguistic universals, Pinker's views on regular and irregular morphology and the brain, and the markedness-based constraints of Optimality Theory. This book traces the heritage of this linguistic naturalism back to its locus classicus, Plato's dialogue Cratylus. The first half of the book is a detailed examination of the linguistic arguments in the Cratylus. The second half follows three of the dialogue's naturalistic themes through subsequent linguistic history - natural grammar and conventional words, from Aristotle to Pinker; natural dialect and artificial language, from Varro to Chomsky; and invisible hierarchies, from Jakobson to Optimality Theory - in search of a way forward beyond these seductive yet spurious and limiting dichotomies.
Download or read book Semantics Volume 1 written by John Lyons and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1977-06-02 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who writes an up-to-date textbook of semantics has to be au fait with an extremely wide range of contemporary academic activity. John Lyons' new book demonstrates a remarkable ability to achieve such catholicity of expertise...
Download or read book Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary written by Catherine Z. Elgin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary, Catherine Z. Elgin maps a constructivist alternative to the standard Anglo-American conception of philosophy's problematic. Under the standard conception, unless answers to philosophical questions are absolute, they are arbitrary. Unless a philosophy is grounded in determinate, agent-neutral facts, it is right only relative to a perspective that cannot in the end be justified. Elgin charts a course between the two poles, showing how fact and value intertwine, where art and science intersect. Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary cuts a path through philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of art, disclosing common problems, resources, and solutions. Elgin highlights the ineliminability of values from the realm of facts, the dependence of facts on category schemes, and the ways human interests, practices, and goals affect the categories we contrive. Individually, the essays in this book contribute to ongoing debates in their respective fields. Collectively, they constitute a sustained critique of an entrenched conception of the resources available to philosophy, and argue for a constructive nominalist alternative. Once free of the conceptual stranglehold of traditional dualisms, Elgin argues, people can contrive a variety of frameworks, tailor-made to suit evolving interests and ends. The results are neither absolute nor arbitrary.
Download or read book Landmarks In Linguistic Thought Volume I written by Professor Roy Harris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By introducing the reader to the main issues and themes that have determined the development of the Western linguistic tradition, an evolution of linguistic thought quickly becomes apparent. Each chapter in this accessible book contains a short extract from a `landmark' text followed by a commentary which places the text in its social and intellectual context.The authors, who consider writers from Aristotle to Caxton to Saussure, have fully revised the original edition ofthis text. Complete with two new chapters on Bishop John Wilkins and Frege, a revised preface and updated bibliography, this book will be invaluable to anyone with an interest in the History of Linguistics, or the History of Western Thought.
Download or read book Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century written by Amos Funkenstein and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "(This work) promises to raise the level and transform the nature of discourse on the relations of Christianity and science . . . (Funkenstein) leaps fearlessly from one philosophical mountaintop to another, comparing and contrasting doctrines in an amazing display of intellectual dexterity. The result is a bold study of ideas . . . bristling with insight and perceptive reinterpretation of familiar episodes in the history of natural philosophy".--David C. Lindberg, "Journal of the History of Medicine". *Lightning Print On Demand Title
Download or read book Actes de la R union Annuelle de L Association de Linguistique Des Provinces Atlantiques written by Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association. Meeting and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Peirce s Theory of Signs written by T. L. Short and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-12 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, T. L. Short corrects widespread misconceptions of Peirce's theory of signs and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy of language, mind and science. Peirce's theory of mind, naturalistic but nonreductive, bears on debates of Fodor and Millikan, among others. His theory of inquiry avoids foundationalism and subjectivism, while his account of reference anticipated views of Kripke and Putnam. Peirce's realism falls between 'internal' and 'metaphysical' realism and is more satisfactory than either. His pragmatism is not verificationism; rather, it identifies meaning with potential growth of knowledge. Short distinguishes Peirce's mature theory of signs from his better-known but paradoxical early theory. He develops the mature theory systematically on the basis of Peirce's phenomenological categories and concept of final causation. The latter is distinguished from recent and similar views, such as Brandon's, and is shown to be grounded in forms of explanation adopted in modern science.