A Modern Theory Of Language Evolution
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A Modern Theory Of Language Evolution
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Author : Carl J. Becker
language : en
Publisher: iUniverse
Release Date : 2004-12
A Modern Theory Of Language Evolution written by Carl J. Becker and has been published by iUniverse this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2004-12 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
The discipline of linguistics is a perfect example of the limitations of the modern academy. The combination of social taboos that make certain subject matter unfit for general knowledge and discovery, and the ever-narrowing specialization of scientists leaves us with an intellectual institution that can no longer do anything but apply, repair, and justify the dogma of Victorian Cosmology that is the rule all must follow. Linguistics should be one of the most interesting subjects, considering it is the study of our most valuable and revealing cultural asset, language. However, recent publications from the linguistic department for public consumption have been some of the most trivial and boring intellectual expositions that have ever been put between two covers. Using the entire database of science, we look at the acquisition of language and how it forms our cultural perspective on life, including theories of language evolution. We develop the theory of the evolution of language from song, one of the few suppositions that Charles Darwin actually got right. From this basis we move on to the roots of Proto-Indo-European, which we call Bhear Tongue. Bhear Tongue is essentially the Eurasian language family dimly perceived by one of the greatest linguists of the twentieth century, Joseph Greenberg. From this perspective we can now retell the tribal stories from Iberia to Siberia, showing a common origin and motivation for human science and religion.
The Evolution Of Language
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Author : W. Tecumseh Fitch
language : en
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Release Date : 2010-04-01
The Evolution Of Language written by W. Tecumseh Fitch and has been published by Cambridge University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2010-04-01 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Language, more than anything else, is what makes us human. It appears that no communication system of equivalent power exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Any normal human child will learn a language based on rather sparse data in the surrounding world, while even the brightest chimpanzee, exposed to the same environment, will not. Why not? How, and why, did language evolve in our species and not in others? Since Darwin's theory of evolution, questions about the origin of language have generated a rapidly-growing scientific literature, stretched across a number of disciplines, much of it directed at specialist audiences. The diversity of perspectives - from linguistics, anthropology, speech science, genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary biology - can be bewildering. Tecumseh Fitch cuts through this vast literature, bringing together its most important insights to explore one of the biggest unsolved puzzles of human history.
Why Only Us
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Author : Robert C. Berwick
language : en
Publisher: MIT Press
Release Date : 2016
Why Only Us written by Robert C. Berwick and has been published by MIT Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
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.
Thomas Harriot
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Author : Robyn Arianrhod
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date : 2019-04-04
Thomas Harriot written by Robyn Arianrhod and has been published by Oxford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-04-04 with History categories.
As Robyn Arianrhod shows in this new biography, the most complete to date, Thomas Harriot was a pioneer in both the figurative and literal sense. Navigational adviser and loyal friend to Sir Walter Ralegh, Harriot--whose life was almost exactly contemporaneous to Shakespeare's--took part in the first expedition to colonize Virginia in 1585. Not only was he responsible for getting Ralegh's ships safely to harbor in the New World, he was also the first European to acquire a working knowledge of an indigenous language from what is today the US, and to record in detail the local people's way of life. In addition to his groundbreaking navigational, linguistic, and ethnological work, Harriot was the first to use a telescope to map the moon's surface, and, independently of Galileo, recorded the behavior of sunspots and discovered the law of free fall. He preceded Newton in his discovery of the properties of the prism and the nature of the rainbow, to name just two more of his unsung "firsts." Indeed many have argued that Harriot was the best mathematician of his age, and one of the finest experimental scientists of all time. Yet he has remained an elusive figure. He had no close family to pass down records, and few of his letters survive. Most importantly, he never published his scientific discoveries, and not long after his death in 1621 had all but been forgotten. In recent decades, many scholars have been intent on restoring Harriot to his rightful place in scientific history, but Arianrhod's biography is the first to pull him fully into the limelight. She has done it the only way it can be done: through his science. Using Harriot's re-discovered manuscripts, Arianrhod illuminates the full extent of his scientific and cultural achievements, expertly guiding us through what makes them original and important, and the story behind them. Harriot's papers provide unique insight into the scientific process itself. Though his thinking depended on a more natural, intuitive approach than those who followed him, and who achieved the lasting fame that escaped him, Harriot helped lay the foundations of what in Newton's time would become modern physics. Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science puts a human face to scientific inquiry in the Elizabethan and Jacobean worlds, and at long last gives proper due to the life and times of one of history's most remarkable minds.
Language History
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Author : Andrew L. Sihler
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date : 2000
Language History written by Andrew L. Sihler and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2000 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This classroom-tested volume aspires to be a brief but technically and factually accurate exposition of linguistic description and history. Whether studied as prime subject or as background information, it should help students understand the assumptions and reasoning that underlie the contents of their handbooks and etymological dictionaries.This book should be a useful guide for anyone unfamiliar with (historical) linguistics who is studying the history of a language, and also for those who are enrolled in courses devoted to reading texts in old languages.
Language Description Informed By Theory
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Author : Rob Pensalfini
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Release Date : 2014-01-15
Language Description Informed By Theory written by Rob Pensalfini and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing Company this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014-01-15 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This volume explores how linguistic theories inform the ways in which languages are described. Theories, as representations of linguistic categories, guide the field linguist to look for various phenomena without presupposing their necessary existence and provide the tools to account for various sets of data across different languages. A goal of linguistic description is to represent the full range of language structures for any given language. The chapters in this book cover various sub-disciplines of linguistics including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, language acquisition, and anthropological linguistics, drawing upon theoretical approaches such as prosodic Phonology, Enhancement theory, Distributed Morphology, Minimalist syntax, Lexical Functional Grammar, and Kinship theory. The languages described in this book include Australian languages (Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan), Romance languages as well as English. This volume will be of interest to researchers in both descriptive and theoretical linguistics.
Simultaneous Structure In Phonology
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Author : D. Robert Ladd
language : en
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Release Date : 2014-04
Simultaneous Structure In Phonology written by D. Robert Ladd and has been published by Oxford University Press, USA this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014-04 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This book surveys the range of well-known non-sequential phonological phenomena that are problematic for the traditional one-dimensional idealization of language. It makes a valuable contribution to phonology and phonetics, focusing on the role of these simultaneous features in the relation between phonological representations and the speech signal
The Open Boundary Of History And Fiction
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Author : Suzanne Gearhart
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2019-02-19
The Open Boundary Of History And Fiction written by Suzanne Gearhart and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-02-19 with Literary Criticism categories.
Challenging the view that a critical sense of history is missing from the Enlightenment, Suzanne Gearhart links the works of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, and Rosseau with the inquiry into the boundary between literature and history in contemporary critical discourse. She considers the theories of Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Althusser, Genette, White, de Man, and Derrida in order to develop a critical approach to fiction and history and to reveal that investigations into the fo undations of historical knowledge, and specifically into what distinguishes hsitory from fiction, were central to the Enlightenment. This book questions many assumptions basic to contemporary criticism by establishing a dialogue between major theorists and Enlightenment figures. It challenges certitudes of fiction and literature by examining the historicity of language, form, and literature itself, redefining history to show its crucial relevance to literary studies and opening historiography to the insights of literary theory. Suzanne Gearhart is Associate Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Legal Theory And The Media Of Law
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Author : Thomas Vesting
language : en
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Release Date : 2018-02-23
Legal Theory And The Media Of Law written by Thomas Vesting and has been published by Edward Elgar Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2018-02-23 with Law categories.
As many disciplines in the humanities have experienced a focus on culture’s impact in recent decades, questions surrounding the significance of media such as writing, print and computer networks have become increasingly relevant. This book seeks to demonstrate that a media and cultural theory perspective can also be highly productive for legal theory.
Everything Evolves
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Author : Mark Vellend
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2025-08-19
Everything Evolves written by Mark Vellend and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2025-08-19 with Science categories.
How the science of evolution explains how everything came to be, from bacteria and blue whales to cell phones, cities, and artificial intelligence Everything Evolves reveals how evolutionary dynamics shape the world as we know it and how we are harnessing the principles of evolution in pursuit of many goals, such as increasing the global food supply and creating artificial intelligence capable of evolving its own solutions to thorny problems. Taking readers on an astonishing journey, Mark Vellend describes how all observable phenomena in the universe can be understood through two sciences. The first is physics. The second is the science of evolvable systems. Vellend shows how this Second Science unifies biology and culture and how evolution gives rise to everything from viruses and giraffes to nation-states, technology, and us. He discusses how the idea of evolution had precedents in areas such as language and economics long before it was made famous by Darwin, and how only by freeing ourselves of the notion that the study of evolution must start with biology can we appreciate the true breadth of evolutionary processes. A sweeping tour of the natural and social sciences, Everything Evolves is an essential introduction to one of the two key pillars to the scientific enterprise and an indispensable guide to understanding some of the most difficult challenges of the Anthropocene.