The Evolution Of Grammar

Author : Joan Bybee,Revere Perkins,William Pagliuca
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 420 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1994-11-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780226086651

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The Evolution of Grammar by Joan Bybee,Revere Perkins,William Pagliuca Pdf

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.

Author : Joan L. Bybee
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
ISBN : OCLC:1391520856

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The Evolution of Grammar by Joan L. Bybee Pdf

Author : James R. Hurford
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 808 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780199207879

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The Origins of Grammar by James R. Hurford Pdf

The second in James Hurford's acclaimed two-volume exploration of the biological evolution of language explores the evolutionary and cultural preconditions and consequences of humanity's great leap into language.

Author : Michael O'Neill,Conor Ryan
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 157 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9781461504474

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Grammatical Evolution by Michael O'Neill,Conor Ryan Pdf

Grammatical Evolution: Evolutionary Automatic Programming in an Arbitrary Language provides the first comprehensive introduction to Grammatical Evolution, a novel approach to Genetic Programming that adopts principles from molecular biology in a simple and useful manner, coupled with the use of grammars to specify legal structures in a search. Grammatical Evolution's rich modularity gives a unique flexibility, making it possible to use alternative search strategies - whether evolutionary, deterministic or some other approach - and to even radically change its behavior by merely changing the grammar supplied. This approach to Genetic Programming represents a powerful new weapon in the Machine Learning toolkit that can be applied to a diverse set of problem domains.

Author : Remi Van Trijp
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2017-06-26
Category : Case grammar
ISBN : 3944675843

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The Evolution of Case Grammar by Remi Van Trijp Pdf

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.

Author : Ray Jackendoff
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 498 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2002-01-24
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191574016

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Foundations of Language by Ray Jackendoff Pdf

How does human language work? How do we put ideas into words that others can understand? Can linguistics shed light on the way the brain operates? Foundations of Language puts linguistics back at the centre of the search to understand human consciousness. Ray Jackendoff begins by surveying the developments in linguistics over the years since Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. He goes on to propose a radical re-conception of how the brain processes language. This opens up vivid new perspectives on every major aspect of language and communication, including grammar, vocabulary, learning, the origins of human language, and how language relates to the real world. Foundations of Language makes important connections with other disciplines which have been isolated from linguistics for many years. It sets a new agenda for close cooperation between the study of language, mind, the brain, behaviour, and evolution.

Author : Bernd Heine,Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of African Studies Bernd Heine,Tania Kuteva,Professor of English Linguistics Tania Kuteva
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 437 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2007-10-04
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780199227761

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The Genesis of Grammar by Bernd Heine,Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of African Studies Bernd Heine,Tania Kuteva,Professor of English Linguistics Tania Kuteva Pdf

This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. It considers whether these languages derive from a single ancestral language; what the structure of language was when it first evolved; and how the properties associated with modern human languages first arose.

Author : Douglas A. Kibbee
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 501 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027211699

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Chomskyan (r)evolutions by Douglas A. Kibbee Pdf

Chomsky's atavistic revolution (with a little help from his enemies) / John E. Joseph -- The equivocation of form and notation in generative grammar / Christopher Beedham -- Chomsky's paradigm : what it includes and what it excludes / Joanna Radwanska-Williams -- "Scientific revolutions" and other kinds of regime change / Stephen O. Murray -- Noam and Zellig / Bruce Nevin -- Chomsky 1951a and Chomsky 1951b / Peter T. Daniels -- Grammar and language in syntactic structures : transformational progress and structuralist "reflux" / Pierre Swiggers -- Chomsky's other revolution / R. Allen Harris -- Chomsky between revolutions / Malcolm D. Hyman -- What do we talk about, when we talk about "universal grammar" and how have we talked about it? / Margaret Thomas -- Migrating propositions and the evolution of generative grammar / Marcus Tomalin -- Universalism and human difference in Chomskyan linguistics : the first "superhominid" and the language faculty / Christopher Hutton -- The evolution of meaning and grammar : Chomskyan theory and the evidence from grammaticalization / T. Craig Christy -- Chomsky in search of a pedigree / Camiel Hamans & Pieter A.M. Seuren -- The "linguistics wars" : a tentative assessment by an outsider witness / Giorgio Graffi -- British empiricism and transformational grammar : a current debate / Jacqueline Léon -- Historiography's contribution to theoretical linguistics / Julie Tetel Andresen.

Author : Michael Spranger
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2016-06-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783946234142

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The evolution of grounded spatial language by Michael Spranger Pdf

This book presents groundbreaking robotic experiments on how and why spatial language evolves. It provides detailed explanations of the origins of spatial conceptualization strategies, spatial categories, landmark systems and spatial grammar by tracing the interplay of environmental conditions, communicative and cognitive pressures. The experiments discussed in this book go far beyond previous approaches in grounded language evolution. For the first time, agents can evolve not only particular lexical systems but also evolve complex conceptualization strategies underlying the emergence of category systems and compositional semantics. Moreover, many issues in cognitive science, ranging from perception and conceptualization to language processing, had to be dealt with to instantiate these experiments, so that this book contributes not only to the study of language evolution but to the investigation of the cognitive bases of spatial language as well.

Author : Jila Ghomeshi
Publisher : Arp Books
Page : 101 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1894037448

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Grammar Matters by Jila Ghomeshi Pdf

It is hard to find someone who doesn't have a pet peeve about language. The act of bemoaning the decline of language has become something of a cottage industry. High profile, self-appointed language police worry that new forms of popular media are contributing to sloppiness, imprecision, and a general disregard for the rules of grammar and speech. Within linguistics the term "prescriptivism" is used to refer to the judgements that people make about language based on the idea that some forms and uses of language are correct and others incorrect. This book argues that prescriptivism is unfounded at its very core, and explores why it is, nevertheless, such a popular position. In doing so it addresses the politics of language: what prescriptivist positions about language use reveal about power, authority, and various social prejudices.

Author : Soteria Svorou
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027229113

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The Grammar of Space by Soteria Svorou Pdf

A cross-linguistic study of grammatical morphemes expressing spatial relationships that discusses the relationship between the way human beings experience space and the way it is encoded grammatically in language. The discussion of the similarities and differences among languages in the encoding and expression of spatial relations centers around the emergence and evolution of spatial grams, and the semantic and morphosyntactic characteristics of two types of spatial grams. The author bases her observations on the study of data from 26 genetically unrelated and randomly selected languages. It is shown that languages are similar in the way spatial grams emerge and evolve, and also in the way specific types of spatial grams are used to express not only spatial but also temporal and other non-spatial relations. Motivation for these similarities may lie in the way we, as human beings, experience the world, which is constrained by our physical configuration and neurophysiological apparatus, as well as our individual cultures.

Author : Yuzhi Shi
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 725 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2023-01-31
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9781108924306

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The Evolution of Chinese Grammar by Yuzhi Shi Pdf

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.

Author : Robert C. Berwick,Noam Chomsky
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2017-05-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780262533492

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Why Only Us by Robert C. Berwick,Noam Chomsky Pdf

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.

Author : Stefan Müller
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 877 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783961102020

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Grammatical theory by Stefan Müller Pdf

This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothesis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured. This book is a new edition of http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/25 and http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/195.

Author : Morten H. Christiansen,Simon Kirby
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2003-07-24
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191581663

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Language Evolution by Morten H. Christiansen,Simon Kirby Pdf

What is it that makes us human? This is one of the most challenging and important questions we face. Our species' defining characteristic is language - we appear to be unique in the natural world in having such an incredibly open-ended system for putting thoughts into words. If we are to truly understand ourselves as a species we must understand the origins of this strange and unique ability. To do so, we need to answer some of the most intriguing questions in contemporary scientific research: Where did language come from? How did it evolve? Why are we unique in possessing it? This book, for the first time, brings together the leading thinkers who are trying to unlock the puzzle of language evolution. Here we see the latest ideas and theories from fields as diverse as anthropology, archaeology, artificial life, biology, cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, and psychology. In a series of seventeen well-written and accessible chapters we get an unrivalled view of the state of the art in this exciting area. Current controversies are revealed and new perspectives uncovered, in a clear and readable guide to the latest theories. This collection marks a major step forward in our quest to understand the origins and evolution of human language. In doing so it sheds new light on the process of evolution, the workings of the brain, the structure of language, and - most importantly - what it means to be human. Language Evolution is essential reading for researchers and students working in the areas covered, and has been used as a textbook for courses in the field. It will also attract the general reader who wants to know more about this fascinating subject.