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Grammar Complexity
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Book Synopsis Computational Complexity and Natural Language by : G. Edward Barton
Download or read book Computational Complexity and Natural Language written by G. Edward Barton and published by Bradford Books. This book was released on 1987 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A nontechnical introduction to complexity theory: its strengths, its weaknesses, and how it can be used to study grammars.
Book Synopsis The Register-Functional Approach to Grammatical Complexity by : Douglas Biber
Download or read book The Register-Functional Approach to Grammatical Complexity written by Douglas Biber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together the authors' previous research with new work on the Register-Functional (RF) approach to grammatical complexity, offering a unified theoretical account for its further study. The book traces the development of the RF approach from its foundations in two major research strands of linguistics: the study of sociolinguistic variation and the text-linguistic study of register variation. Building on this foundation, the authors demonstrate the RF framework at work across a series of corpus-based research studies focused specifically on grammatical complexity in English. The volume highlights early work exploring patterns of grammatical complexity in present-day spoken and written registers as well as subsequent studies which extend this research to historical patterns of register variation and the application of RF research to the study of writing development for L1 and L2 English university students. Taken together, along with the addition of introductory chapters connecting the different studies, the volume offers readers with a comprehensive resource to better understand the RF approach to grammatical complexity and its implications for future research. The volume will appeal to students and scholars with research interests in either descriptive linguistics or applied linguistics, especially those interested in grammatical complexity and empirical, corpus-based approaches.
Book Synopsis Grammatical Complexity in Academic English by : Douglas Biber
Download or read book Grammatical Complexity in Academic English written by Douglas Biber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grammatical Complexity in Academic English uses corpus-based analyses to challenge a number of dominant stereotypes and assumptions within linguistics. Biber and Gray tackle the nature of grammatical complexity, demonstrating that embedded phrasal structures are as important as embedded dependent clauses. The authors also overturn ingrained assumptions about linguistic change, showing that grammatical change occurs in writing as well as speech. This work establishes that academic writing is structurally compressed (rather than elaborated); that it is often not explicit in the expression of meaning; and that scientific academic writing has been the locus of some of the most important grammatical changes in English over the past 200 years (rather than being conservative and resistant to change). Supported throughout with textual evidence, this work is essential reading for discourse analysts, sociolinguists, and applied linguists, as well as descriptive linguists and historical linguists.
Book Synopsis Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I by : Francesca Di Garbo
Download or read book Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I written by Francesca Di Garbo and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity.
Book Synopsis Language Complexity by : Matti Miestamo
Download or read book Language Complexity written by Matti Miestamo and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language complexity has recently attracted considerable attention from linguists of many different persuasions. This volume a thematic selection of papers from the conference Approaches to Complexity in Language, held in Helsinki, August 2005 is the first collection of articles devoted to the topic. The sixteen chapters of the volume approach the notion of language complexity from a variety of perspectives. The papers are divided into three thematic sections that reflect the central themes of the book: Typology and theory, Contact and change, Creoles and pidgins. The book is mainly intended for typologists, historical linguists, contact linguists and creolists, as well as all linguists interested in language complexity in general. As the first collective volume on a very topical theme, the book is expected to be of lasting interest to the linguistic community.
Book Synopsis The Formal Complexity of Natural Language by : W.J. Savitch
Download or read book The Formal Complexity of Natural Language written by W.J. Savitch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Chomsky laid the framework for a mathematically formal theory of syntax, two classes of formal models have held wide appeal. The finite state model offered simplicity. At the opposite extreme numerous very powerful models, most notable transformational grammar, offered generality. As soon as this mathematical framework was laid, devastating arguments were given by Chomsky and others indicating that the finite state model was woefully inadequate for the syntax of natural language. In response, the completely general transformational grammar model was advanced as a suitable vehicle for capturing the description of natural language syntax. While transformational grammar seems likely to be adequate to the task, many researchers have advanced the argument that it is "too adequate. " A now classic result of Peters and Ritchie shows that the model of transformational grammar given in Chomsky's Aspects [IJ is powerful indeed. So powerful as to allow it to describe any recursively enumerable set. In other words it can describe the syntax of any language that is describable by any algorithmic process whatsoever. This situation led many researchers to reasses the claim that natural languages are included in the class of transformational grammar languages. The conclu sion that many reached is that the claim is void of content, since, in their view, it says little more than that natural language syntax is doable algo rithmically and, in the framework of modern linguistics, psychology or neuroscience, that is axiomatic.
Book Synopsis Measuring Grammatical Complexity by : Frederick J. Newmeyer
Download or read book Measuring Grammatical Complexity written by Frederick J. Newmeyer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the question of whether languages can differ in grammatical complexity and, if so, how relative complexity differences might be measured. Chapters approach the question from the point of view of formal grammatical theory, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics, and take phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics into account.
Book Synopsis Grammar & Complexity by : Peter Culicover
Download or read book Grammar & Complexity written by Peter Culicover and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines ideas about the architecture of grammar and language acquisition, processing, and change to explain why languages show regular patterns when there is so much irregularity in their use and so much complexity when there is such regularity in linguistic phenomena. Peter Culicover argues that the structure of language can be understood and explained in terms of two kinds of complexity: firstly that of the correspondence between form and meaning; secondly in the real-time processes involved in the construction of meanings in linguistic expressions. Mainstream generative theory is based on inherent linguistic competence and on the regularities within and across languages, with the exceptional aspects of any language frequently put to one side. But a language's irregular and unique features offer, the author argues, fundamental insights into both the nature of language and the way it is produced and understood. Peter Culicover's new book offers a pertinent and original contribution to key current debates in linguistic theory. It will interest scholars and advanced students of linguists of all theoretical persuasions.
Book Synopsis Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable by : Geoffrey Sampson
Download or read book Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable written by Geoffrey Sampson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-26 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book challenges the idea that languages are equally complex. Eighteen scholars look at evidence from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and change and social complexity. Their conclusions challenge conventional ideas about the nature of language and contemporary theory.
Book Synopsis The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity by : Östen Dahl
Download or read book The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity written by Östen Dahl and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-08-31 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies linguistic complexity and the processes by which it arises and is maintained, focusing not so much on what one can say in a language as how it is said. Complexity is not seen as synonymous with “difficulty” but as an objective property of a system – a measure of the amount of information needed to describe or reconstruct it. Grammatical complexity is the result of historical processes often subsumed under the rubric of grammaticalization and involves what can be called mature linguistic phenomena, that is, features that take time to develop. The nature and characteristics of such processes are discussed in detail, as well as the external and internal factors that favor or disfavor stability and change in language.
Book Synopsis Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars by : John A. Hawkins
Download or read book Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars written by John A. Hawkins and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2004-11-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Hawkins demonstrates a clear link between how languages are used and the conventions of their grammars. He sets out a theory in which performance shapes grammars and accounts for the variation patterns found in the world's languages.
Book Synopsis Syntactic Complexity by : Talmy Givón
Download or read book Syntactic Complexity written by Talmy Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complex hierarchic syntax is considered one of the hallmarks of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the apex of the uniquely-human language faculty evolutionary but somehow immune to adaptive selection. This volume, coming out of a symposium held at Rice University in March 2008, tackles syntactic complexity from multiple developmental perspectives. We take it for granted that grammar is an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic cognition. Most of the papers in the volume deal with the two grand developmental trends of human language: diachrony, the communal enterprise directly responsible for fashioning synchronic morpho-syntax; and ontogeny, the individual endeavor directly responsible for the acquisition of competent grammatical performance. The genesis of syntactic complexity along these two developmental trends is considered alongside with the cognition and neurology of grammar and of syntactic complexity, and the evolutionary relevance of diachrony, ontogeny and pidginization is argued on general bio-evolutionary grounds. Lastly, several of the contributions to the volume suggest that recursive embedding is not in itself an adaptive target, but rather the by-product of two distinct adaptive gambits: the recruitment of conjoined clauses as modal operators on other clauses and the subsequent condensation of paratactic into syntactic structures.
Book Synopsis Complexity in Language by : Salikoko S. Mufwene
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.
Book Synopsis Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II by : Francesca Di Garbo
Download or read book Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II written by Francesca Di Garbo and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. Volume two consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity. This volume is preceded by volume one, which, in addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia.
Book Synopsis Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable by : Geoffrey Sampson
Download or read book Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable written by Geoffrey Sampson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-02-26 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a challenge to the widely-held assumption that human languages are both similar and constant in their degree of complexity. For a hundred years or more the universal equality of languages has been a tenet of faith among most anthropologists and linguists. It has been frequently advanced as a corrective to the idea that some languages are at a later stage of evolution than others. It also appears to be an inevitable outcome of one of the central axioms of generative linguistic theory: that the mental architecture of language is fixed and is thus identical in all languages and that whereas genes evolve languages do not. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable reopens the debate. Geoffrey Sampson's introductory chapter re-examines and clarifies the notion and theoretical importance of complexity in language, linguistics, cognitive science, and evolution. Eighteen distinguished scholars from all over the world then look at evidence gleaned from their own research in order to reconsider whether languages do or do not exhibit the same degrees and kinds of complexity. They examine data from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and social complexity and relate their findings to the causes and processes of language change. Their arguments are frequently controversial and provocative; their conclusions add up to an important challenge to conventional ideas about the nature of language. The authors write readably and accessibly with no recourse to unnecessary jargon. This fascinating book will appeal to all those interested in the interrelations between human nature, culture, and language.
Book Synopsis Complexity Perspectives on Language, Communication and Society by : Àngels Massip-Bonet
Download or read book Complexity Perspectives on Language, Communication and Society written by Àngels Massip-Bonet and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-10-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “language-communication-society” triangle defies traditional scientific approaches. Rather, it is a phenomenon that calls for an integration of complex, transdisciplinary perspectives, if we are to make any progress in understanding how it works. The highly diverse agents in play are not merely cognitive and/or cultural, but also emotional and behavioural in their specificity. Indeed, the effort may require building a theoretical and methodological body of knowledge that can effectively convey the characteristic properties of phenomena in human terms. New complexity approaches allow us to rethink our limited and mechanistic images of human societies and create more appropriate emo-cognitive dynamic and holistic models. We have to enter into dialogue with the complexity views coming out of other more ‘material’ sciences, but we also need to take steps in the linguistic and psycho-sociological fields towards creating perspectives and concepts better fitted to human characteristics. Our understanding of complexity is different – but not opposed – to the one that is more commonly found in texts written by people working in physics or computer science, for example. The goal of this book is to extend the knowledge of these other more ‘human’ or socially oriented perspectives on complexity, taking account of the language and communication singularities of human agents in society. Our understanding of complexity is different – but not opposed – to the one that is more commonly found in texts written by people working in physics or computer science, for example. The goal of this book is to extend the knowledge of these other more ‘human’ or socially oriented perspectives on complexity, taking account of the language and communication singularities of human agents in society.
Book Synopsis Mysteries of English Grammar by : Andreea S. Calude
Download or read book Mysteries of English Grammar written by Andreea S. Calude and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite a history of hundreds of years of research analysing aspects of English grammar, there are still open problems which continue to baffle language researchers today. Such ‘grammar mysteries’ arise for a number of reasons: because the language is changing; because different speakers of the language adhere to distinct norms and thus introduce and maintain variation in the system; because there are differences between the grammar of spoken and written English. This book illuminates some of the complexities of the subject, the areas where new discoveries await and why it matters. Through a series of accessible and engaging case studies on various aspects of grammar, from multiple negation to possession, the authors present grammar as an intellectual challenge. This book brings out into the open questions about language usage to which we still do not have good answers in a bid to make variation overt and to revel in the mystery of the English language. Both aimed at the interested general reader and the beginning student of English language and linguistics, this is a fresh take on grammar.
