" ... originated as a symposium on 'Probability theory in linguistics' held in Washington, D.C. as part of the Linguistic Society of America meeting in January 2001"--Preface.For the past forty years, linguistics has been dominated by the idea that language is categorical and linguistic competence discrete. It has become increasingly clear, however, that many levels of representation, from phon…
This book addresses the subject of emotional speech, especially its encoding and decoding process during interactive communication, based on an improved version of Brunswik’s Lens Model. The process is shown to be influenced by the speaker’s and the listener’s linguistic and cultural backgrounds, as well as by the transmission channels used. Through both psycholinguistic and phonetic a…
The Indo-Aryan language of Sanskrit is the primary language of Hinduism and also a scholarly language of Buddhism. Dating back to the second millennium BCE, it is considered to be the parent of most modern languages of India, and remains central to work in Indo-European studies, philology and linguistics today. First published in 1806, this is a comprehensive grammar of Sanskrit, compiled by th…
This book explores the various categories of speech variation and works to draw a line between linguistic and paralinguistic phenomenon of speech. Paralinguistic contrast is crucial to human speech but has proven to be one of the most difficult tasks in speech systems. In the quest for solutions to speech technology and sciences, this book narrows down the gap between speech technologists and …
This book owes its title to a simple idea: words are special because they can provide a label for nothing when they merge with some other category. An exemplification of this special power of words is introduced by the familiar head-complement configurations. For example, the structure that is created when a verb and a direct object DP are merged receives a label from the verb, namely it is a V…
An investigation of how children balance rules and exceptions when they learn languages."All languages have exceptions alongside overarching rules and regularities. How does a young child tease them apart within just a few years of language acquisition? In this book, drawing an economic analogy, Charles Yang argues that just as the price of goods is determined by the balance between supply and …
"A Bradford book."OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
AnnotationOCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
An in-depth analysis of how humanity's compulsion to categorize affects every aspect of our lived experience. The minute we are born -- sometimes even before -- we are categorized. From there, classifications dog our every step: to school, work, the doctor's office, and even the grave. Despite the vast diversity and individuality in every life, we seek patterns, organization, and control. In Ca…
"Two senior scholars explain what language does to human beings, especially how it affects our intersubjective competence"--OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.