1.
Linguistics
–
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning, phonetics is the study of speech and non-speech sounds, and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, Grammar is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound as well as meaning, and include componential sub-sets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology, morphology, modern theories that deal with the principles of grammar are largely based within Noam Chomskys ideological school of generative grammar. In the early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure distinguished between the notions of langue and parole in his formulation of structural linguistics. According to him, parole is the utterance of speech, whereas langue refers to an abstract phenomenon that theoretically defines the principles. This distinction resembles the one made by Noam Chomsky between competence and performance in his theory of transformative or generative grammar. According to Chomsky, competence is an innate capacity and potential for language, while performance is the specific way in which it is used by individuals, groups. The study of parole is the domain of sociolinguistics, the sub-discipline that comprises the study of a system of linguistic facets within a certain speech community. Discourse analysis further examines the structure of texts and conversations emerging out of a speech communitys usage of language, Stylistics also involves the study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media. In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida, for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that language be studied as a linguistic medium of communication in itself. Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of scripts in language. Linguistics also deals with the social, cultural, historical and political factors that influence language, through which linguistic, research on language through the sub-branches of historical and evolutionary linguistics also focus on how languages change and grow, particularly over an extended period of time. Language documentation combines anthropological inquiry with linguistic inquiry, in order to describe languages, lexicography involves the documentation of words that form a vocabulary. Such a documentation of a vocabulary from a particular language is usually compiled in a dictionary. Computational linguistics is concerned with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective, specific knowledge of language is applied by speakers during the act of translation and interpretation, as well as in language education – the teaching of a second or foreign language. Policy makers work with governments to implement new plans in education, related areas of study also includes the disciplines of semiotics, literary criticism, translation, and speech-language pathology. Before the 20th century, the philology, first attested in 1716, was commonly used to refer to the science of language
Linguistics
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Ancient
Tamil inscription at
Thanjavur
Linguistics
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Topics and terminology
2.
Phonology
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Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages. Phonology also includes the study of equivalent organizational systems in sign languages, the word phonology can also refer to the phonological system of a given language. This is one of the systems which a language is considered to comprise, like its syntax. Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics, note that this distinction was not always made, particularly before the development of the modern concept of the phoneme in the mid 20th century. The word phonology comes from Ancient Greek φωνή, phōnḗ, voice, sound, according to Clark et al. it means the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. The history of phonology may be traced back to the Ashtadhyayi, Baudouin de Courtenays work, though often unacknowledged, is considered to be the starting point of modern phonology. He also worked on the theory of alternations, and may have had an influence on the work of Saussure according to E. F. K. Koerner. An influential school of phonology in the period was the Prague school. One of its members was Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy, whose Grundzüge der Phonologie. Directly influenced by Baudouin de Courtenay, Trubetzkoy is considered the founder of morphophonology, Trubetzkoy also developed the concept of the archiphoneme. Another important figure in the Prague school was Roman Jakobson, who was one of the most prominent linguists of the 20th century, in 1968 Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle published The Sound Pattern of English, the basis for generative phonology. In this view, phonological representations are sequences of segments made up of distinctive features and these features were an expansion of earlier work by Roman Jakobson, Gunnar Fant, and Morris Halle. The features describe aspects of articulation and perception, are from a fixed set. There are at least two levels of representation, underlying representation and surface phonetic representation, ordered phonological rules govern how underlying representation is transformed into the actual pronunciation. An important consequence of the influence SPE had on phonological theory was the downplaying of the syllable, furthermore, the generativists folded morphophonology into phonology, which both solved and created problems. Natural phonology is a based on the publications of its proponent David Stampe in 1969. In this view, phonology is based on a set of phonological processes that interact with one another, which ones are active. Rather than acting on segments, phonological processes act on distinctive features within prosodic groups, prosodic groups can be as small as a part of a syllable or as large as an entire utterance
Phonology
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Nikolai Trubetzkoy, 1920s
3.
Syntax
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In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, specifically word order. The term syntax is used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages, in mathematics, syntax refers to the rules governing the behavior of mathematical systems, such as formal languages used in logic. The word syntax comes from Ancient Greek, σύνταξις coordination, which consists of σύν syn, together, and τάξις táxis, a basic feature of a languages syntax is the sequence in which the subject, verb, and object usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV, the other possible sequences are VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, the last three of which are rare. In the West, the school of thought came to be known as traditional grammar began with the work of Dionysius Thrax. For centuries, work in syntax was dominated by a known as grammaire générale. This system took as its premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and therefore there is a single. It became apparent that there was no such thing as the most natural way to express a thought, the Port-Royal grammar modeled the study of syntax upon that of logic. Syntactic categories were identified with logical ones, and all sentences were analyzed in terms of Subject – Copula – Predicate, initially, this view was adopted even by the early comparative linguists such as Franz Bopp. The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, there are a number of theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax. One school of thought, founded in the works of Derek Bickerton, sees syntax as a branch of biology, other linguists take a more Platonistic view, since they regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system. Yet others consider syntax a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages, the hypothesis of generative grammar is that language is a structure of the human mind. The goal of grammar is to make a complete model of this inner language. This model could be used to all human language and to predict the grammaticality of any given utterance. This approach to language was pioneered by Noam Chomsky, most generative theories assume that syntax is based upon the constituent structure of sentences. Generative grammars are among the theories that focus primarily on the form of a sentence and this complex category is notated as instead of V. NP\S is read as a category that searches to the left for an NP and outputs a sentence. The category of verb is defined as an element that requires two NPs to form a sentence
Syntax
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A syntactic parse of "Alfred spoke" under the dependency formalism
4.
Pragmatics
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Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, linguistics and anthropology. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, the ability to understand another speakers intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. The sentence You have a light is ambiguous. Without knowing the context, the identity of the speaker, and his or her intent, for example, It could mean that the space that belongs to you has green ambient lighting. It could mean that you are driving through a traffic signal. It could mean that you no longer have to wait to continue driving and it could mean that you are permitted to proceed in a non-driving context. It could mean that your body has a green glow and it could mean that you possess a light bulb that is tinted green. Similarly, the sentence Sherlock saw the man with binoculars could mean that Sherlock observed the man by using binoculars, the meaning of the sentence depends on an understanding of the context and the speakers intent. This suggests that sentences do not have meaning intrinsically, there is not an associated with a sentence or word. The cat sat on the mat is a sentence in English, if someone were to say to someone else, The cat sat on the mat, this is an example of an utterance. Thus, there is no such thing as a sentence, term, expression or word symbolically representing a true meaning, it is underspecified. The meaning of an utterance, on the hand, is inferred based on linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the non-linguistic context of the utterance. In mathematics with Berrys paradox there arose a systematic ambiguity with the word definable, the ambiguity with words shows that the descriptive power of any human language is limited. Pragmatics was a reaction to structuralist linguistics as outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure, in many cases, it expanded upon his idea that language has an analyzable structure, composed of parts that can be defined in relation to others. Pragmatics first engaged only in study, as opposed to examining the historical development of language. However, it rejected the notion that all meaning comes from signs existing purely in the space of langue. Meanwhile, historical pragmatics has also come into being, the study of the speakers meaning, not focusing on the phonetic or grammatical form of an utterance, but instead on what the speakers intentions and beliefs are
Pragmatics
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Topics and terminology
5.
Semiotics
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Semiotics is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication. This includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, the semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. As different from linguistics, however, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems, some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science, however. They examine areas belonging also to the life sciences—such as how organisms make predictions about, in general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study, the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics. John Locke used the term semiotike in book four, chapter 21 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, an intelligence capable of learning by experience, and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes. The Peirce scholar and editor Max H. Fisch claimed in 1978 that semeiotic was Peirces own preferred rendering of Lockes σημιωτική, Charles W. Morris followed Peirce in using the term semiotic and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to animal learning and use of signals. Ferdinand de Saussure, however, founded his semiotics, which he called semiology, in the social sciences, possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of psychology, and hence of general psychology. It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them, since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be applicable in linguistics. While the Saussurean semiotic is dyadic, the Peircean semiotic is triadic, Peircean semiotics further subdivides each of the three triadic elements into three sub-types. For example, signs can be icons, indices, and symbols, Thomas Sebeok assimilated semiology to semiotics as a part to a whole, and was involved in choosing the name Semiotica for the first international journal devoted to the study of signs. For Derrida, il ny a pas de hors-texte and he was in obvious opposition to materialists and marxists who argued that a sign has to point towards a real meaning, and cannot be controlled by the referents closed-loop references. The importance of signs and signification has been recognized much of the history of philosophy. Plato and Aristotle both explored the relationship between signs and the world, and Augustine considered the nature of the sign within a conventional system and these theories have had a lasting effect in Western philosophy, especially through scholastic philosophy. In contrast to this, human understanding adds to the animal Umwelt a relation of self-identity within objects which transforms objects experienced into things as well as +, –,0 objects, Peirces distinguished between the interpretant and the interpreter
Semiotics
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Chart
semiotics of social networking
Semiotics
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Color-coding hot- and cold-water faucets (taps) is common in many cultures but, as this example shows, the coding may be rendered meaningless because of context. The two faucets (taps) probably were sold as a coded set, but the code is unusable (and ignored), as there is a single water supply.
Semiotics
–
Signaling and communication between the
Astatotilapia burtoni
Semiotics
–
Topics and terminology
6.
Sociolinguistics
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Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics. It is historically related to linguistic anthropology and the distinction between the two fields has even been questioned. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, the study of the social motivation of language change, on the other hand, has its foundation in the wave model of the late 19th century. The first attested use of the term sociolinguistics was by Thomas Callan Hodson in the title of his 1939 article Sociolinguistics in India published in Man in India. Sociolinguistics in the West first appeared in the 1960s and was pioneered by such as William Labov in the US. For example, a sociolinguist might determine through study of attitudes that a particular vernacular would not be considered appropriate language use in a business or professional setting. Sociolinguists might also study the grammar, phonetics, vocabulary, the study of language variation is concerned with social constraints determining language in its contextual environment. Code-switching is the given to the use of different varieties of language in different social situations. William Labov is often regarded as the founder of the study of sociolinguistics and he is especially noted for introducing the quantitative study of language variation and change, making the sociology of language into a scientific discipline. Also, sociolinguistics can study a gradual transition of individual values of a word in the context its semantics which occur in some ethnic, altyntsev studied the semantics of the word love among the Ashkenazi Jews from Udmurtia and Tatarstan. Sociolinguistic interviews are a part of collecting data for sociolinguistic studies. There is an interviewer, who is conducting the study, and a subject, or informant, who is the interviewee. In order to get a grasp on a linguistic form and how it is used in the dialect of the subject. There are five different styles, ranging from formal to casual, the most formal style would be elicited by having the subject read a list of minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are pairs of words differ in only one phoneme. Having the subject read a word list will elicit a formal register, the reading passage style is next down on the formal register, and the interview style is when an interviewer can finally get into eliciting a more casual speech from the subject. Of course, the most sought after type of speech is the casual style and this type of speech is difficult if not impossible to elicit because of the Observers Paradox. The closest one might come to CS in an interview is when the subject is interrupted by a friend or family member
Sociolinguistics
–
Topics and terminology
7.
Evolutionary linguistics
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Evolutionary linguistics is a subfield of psycholinguistics that studies the psychosocial and cultural factors involved in the origin of language and the development of linguistic universals. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data, inspired by the natural sciences, especially by biology, August Schleicher became the first to compare changing languages to evolving species. He introduced the representation of language families as a tree in articles published in 1853. Stammbaumtheorie proved very productive for comparative linguistics, but did not solve the problem of studying the origin of language. Some scholars abandoned the question of the origin of language as unsolvable, famously, the Société Linguistique de Paris in 1866 refused to admit any further papers on the subject. Joseph Jastrow published a theory of the evolution of language in the seventh volume of Science,1886. The field re-appeared in 1988 in the Linguistic Bibliography as a subfield of psycholinguistics, in 1990, Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom published their paper Natural Language and Natural Selection which strongly argued for an adaptationist approach to language origins. Evolutionary linguistics as a field is rapidly emerging as a result of developments in neighboring disciplines, to what extent languages features are determined by genes, a hotly debated dichotomy in linguistics, has had new light shed upon it by the discovery of the FOXP2 gene. An English family with a severe, heritable language dysfunction was found to have a copy of this gene. Mutations of the gene in mice cause reductions in size. If both copies are damaged, the Purkinje layer develops abnormally, runting is more common, additionally, higher presence of FOXP2 in songbirds is correlated to song changes, with downregulation causing incomplete and inaccurate song imitation in zebra finches. In general, evidence suggests that the protein is vital to neuroplasticity, there is little support, however, for the idea that FOXP2 is the grammar gene or that it had much to do with the relatively recent emergence of syntactical speech. Another controversial dichotomy is the question of human language is solely human or on a continuum with animal communication systems. Studies in ethology have forced researchers to reassess many claims of human abilities for language. For instance, Tecumseh Fitch has argued that the larynx is not unique to humans. Similarly, once held uniquely human traits such as formant perception, combinatorial phonology, as it leaves no fossils, languages form and even its presence are extremely hard or impossible to deduce from physical evidence. Computational modeling is now accepted as an approach to assure the internal consistency of language-evolution scenarios. Approximately one-third of all papers presented at the 2010 Evolution of Language conference rely at least in part on computer simulations, one original researcher in the field is Luc Steels, head of the research units of Sony CSL in Paris and the AI Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Evolutionary linguistics
–
Diagrammatic representation of the
divergence of modern
taxonomic groups from their
common ancestor
8.
Forensic linguistics
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It is a branch of applied linguistics. The discipline of linguistics is not homogenous, it involves a range of experts. The phrase forensic linguistics first appeared in 1968 when Jan Svartvik, during the early days of forensic linguistics in the United Kingdom, the legal defense for many criminal cases questioned the authenticity of police statements. At the time, customary police procedure for taking suspects statements dictated that it be in a specific format, statements by witnesses are very seldom made in a coherent or orderly fashion, with speculation and backtracking done out loud. The delivery is often too fast-paced, causing important details to be left out, early work of forensic linguistics in the United States concerned the rights of individuals with regard to understanding their Miranda rights during the interrogation process. An early application of linguistics in the United States was related to the status of trademarks as words or phrases in the language. In the 1980s, Australian linguists discussed the application of linguistics and sociolinguistics to legal issues and they discovered that a phrase such as the same language is open to interpretation. Aboriginal people have their own understanding and use of English, something that is not always appreciated by speakers of the dominant version of English, the Aboriginal people also bring their own culturally based, interactional styles to the interview. The range of topics within forensic linguistics is diverse, but research occurs in the following areas and that includes the study of text types and forms of analysis. Any text or item of spoken language can potentially be a text when it is used in a legal or criminal context. It can also refer to the attempts at making legal language more comprehensible to laypeople. Intonational emphasis, voice pitch and the extent to which there is cooperation between the caller and the recipient at any one time are very important in analysing an emergency call. Full cooperation includes frank and timely responses, urgency plays a role in emergency calls, so hesitations, signs of evasiveness, and incomplete or overly short answers indicate that the caller might be making a false or hoax call. A genuine call has distinctive interlocking and slight overlap of turns, the recipient trusts the caller to provide accurate information and the caller trusts the recipient to ask only pertinent questions. If the caller uses a pitch at the end of every turn, it might represent a lack of commitment. The call ideally moves from nil knowledge on the part of the recipient to an amount of knowledge in a minimum possible period of time. This makes the emergency call unlike any other kind of service encounter, threat is a counterpart of a promise and is an important feature in a ransom demand. Ransom demands are also examined to identify genuine and false threats
Forensic linguistics
–
Forensic science
9.
Internet linguistics
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Internet linguistics is a domain of linguistics advocated by the English linguist David Crystal. It studies new language styles and forms that have arisen under the influence of the Internet and other New Media, studying the emerging language on the Internet can help improve conceptual organization, translation and web usability. This study is intended to both linguists and web users. The study of Internet linguistics can be effectively done through four main perspectives, sociolinguistics, education, stylistics, the Internet continues to play a significant role in both encouraging as well as diverting attention away from the usage of languages. David Crystal has identified four main perspectives for further investigation – the sociolinguistic perspective, the perspective, the stylistic perspective. The four perspectives are effectively interlinked and affect one another and this perspective deals with how society views the impact of Internet development on languages. The advent of the Internet has revolutionized communication in many ways, it changed the way people communicate, significant avenues include but are not limited to SMS text messaging, e-mails, chatgroups, virtual worlds and the Web. The evolution of these new mediums of communications has raised concern with regards to the way language is being used. At a personal level, CMC such as SMS Text Messaging, some examples include the iPhone and the BlackBerry. In schools, it is not uncommon for educators and students to be given personalized school e-mail accounts for communication and interaction purposes, classroom discussions are increasingly being brought onto the Internet in the form of discussion forums. These forms of social networking and media are slated to rise as educators from all over the world continue to seek new ways to better engage students. ”This will affect the way language is used as students. At a professional level, it is a sight for companies to have their computers and laptops hooked up onto the Internet. This greatly facilitates internal and external communication, mobile communications such as smart phones are increasingly making their way into the corporate world. In general, these new CMCs that are possible by the Internet have altered the way people use language – there is heightened informality. However, as David Crystal puts it, these should be seen positively as it reflects the power of the creativity of a language, the sociolinguistics of the Internet may also be examined through five interconnected themes. Multilingualism – It looks at the prevalence and status of languages on the Internet. Language change – From a sociolinguistic perspective, language change is influenced by the constraints of technology. It explores the changes over time, with emphasis on Internet lingo
Internet linguistics
–
Source: Internet World Stats
Internet linguistics
–
An
Opte Project visualization of
routing paths through a portion of the Internet
10.
Language acquisition
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Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition is one of the human traits, because non-humans do not communicate by using language. Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants acquisition of their native language and this is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition of additional languages. The capacity to use language requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign, human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand a number of sentences. Evidence suggests that individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are, relativization, complementation and coordination, some early observation-based ideas about language acquisition were proposed by Plato, who felt that word-meaning mapping in some form was innate. In a more modern context, empiricists, like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, proponents of behaviorism argued that language may be learned through a form of operant conditioning. In B. F. Skinners Verbal Behaviour, he suggested that the use of a sign, such as a word or lexical unit, given a certain stimulus. Some empiricist theories of language include the statistical learning theory. Charles F. Hockett of language acquisition, relational frame theory, functionalist linguistics, social interactionist theory, Skinners behaviourist idea was strongly attacked by Noam Chomsky in a review article in 1959, calling it largely mythology and a serious delusion. Arguments against Skinners idea of language acquisition through operant conditioning include the fact that children often ignore language corrections from adults. Instead, children follow a pattern of using an irregular form of a word correctly, making errors later on. For example, a child may learn the word gave. Eventually, the child will go back to learning the correct word. The pattern is difficult to attribute to Skinners idea of operant conditioning as the way that children acquire language. Chomsky argued that if language were solely acquired through behavioral conditioning, children would not likely learn the use of a word
Language acquisition
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Learning box for language acquisition
11.
Language education
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Language education refers to the process and practice of acquiring a second or foreign language. It primarily is a branch of applied linguistics, however can be considered an interdisciplinary field, there are four main learning categories for language education, communicative competencies, proficiencies, cross-cultural experiences, and multiple literacies. Increasing globalization has created a large need for people in the workforce who can communicate in multiple languages, the uses of common languages are in areas such as trade, tourism, international relations, technology, media, and science. Many countries such as Korea, Japan and China frame education policies to teach at least one language at the primary and secondary school levels. However, some such as India, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan. According to GAO, China has recently been putting enormous importance on foreign language learning, although the need to learn foreign languages is older than human history itself, the origins of modern language education are in the study and teaching of Latin in the 17th century. John Amos Comenius was one of people who tried to reverse this trend. He composed a complete course for learning Latin, covering the school curriculum. In this work, Comenius also outlined his theory of language acquisition and he is one of the first theorists to write systematically about how languages are learned and about pedagogical methodology for language acquisition. He held that language acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience, the schoolroom should have models of things, and failing that, pictures of them. As a result, he published the worlds first illustrated childrens book. The study of Latin diminished from the study of a language to be used in the real world to a subject in the school curriculum. Such decline brought about a new justification for its study and it was then claimed that its study developed intellectual abilities, and the study of Latin grammar became an end in and of itself. Grammar schools from the 16th to 18th centuries focused on teaching the grammatical aspects of Classical Latin, advanced students continued grammar study with the addition of rhetoric. The study of modern languages did not become part of the curriculum of European schools until the 18th century, based on the purely academic study of Latin, students of modern languages did much of the same exercises, studying grammatical rules and translating abstract sentences. Oral work was minimal, and students were required to memorize grammatical rules. This tradition-inspired method became known as the grammar-translation method, innovation in foreign language teaching began in the 19th century and became very rapid in the 20th century. It led to a number of different and sometimes conflicting methods, the earliest applied linguists included Jean Manesca, Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff, Henry Sweet, Otto Jespersen, and Harold Palmer
Language education
–
Henry Sweet was a key figure in establishing the
applied linguistics tradition in language teaching
Language education
–
High school Spanish taught as a second
language to a class of native
English speakers at an
American private school in
Massachusetts.
12.
Neurolinguistics
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Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. Researchers are drawn to the field from a variety of backgrounds, Neurolinguistics is historically rooted in the development in the 19th century of aphasiology, the study of linguistic deficits occurring as the result of brain damage. Aphasiology attempts to structure to function by analyzing the effect of brain injuries on language processing. The work of Broca and Wernicke established the field of aphasiology, harry Whitaker popularized neurolinguistics in the United States in the 1970s, founding the journal Brain and Language in 1974. The N400 was the first language-relevant brain response to be identified, much work in neurolinguistics involves testing and evaluating theories put forth by psycholinguists and theoretical linguists. Neurolinguistics research is carried out in all the areas of linguistics, the main linguistic subfields. Much work in neurolinguistics has, like Brocas and Wernickes early studies, another area of neurolinguistics literature involves the use of electrophysiological techniques to analyze the rapid processing of language in time. Another topic is the relationship between brain structures and language acquisition, ping Li, Jennifer Legault, Kaitlyn A. Litcofsky, May 2014. Since one of the focuses of this field is the testing of linguistic and psycholinguistic models, modern brain imaging techniques have contributed greatly to a growing understanding of the anatomical organization of linguistic functions. Brain imaging methods used in neurolinguistics may be classified into hemodynamic methods, electrophysiological methods, hemodynamic techniques take advantage of the fact that when an area of the brain works at a task, blood is sent to supply that area with oxygen. Such techniques include PET and fMRI, functional near-infrared spectroscopy is another hemodynamic method used in language tasks. Electrophysiological techniques take advantage of the fact that when a group of neurons in the fire together. The technique of EEG measures this electric current using sensors on the scalp, in addition to these non-invasive methods, electrocorticography has also been used to study language processing. On the other hand, the location of activity can be difficult to identify in EEG, consequently. Research using EEG and MEG generally focuses on event-related potentials, which are distinct brain responses elicited in response to a particular stimulus, studies using ERP may focus on each ERPs latency, amplitude, or topography. Some important and common ERP components include the N400, the negativity, the early left anterior negativity, the P600. Neurolinguists employ a variety of techniques in order to use brain imaging to draw conclusions about how language is represented and processed in the brain. These techniques include the subtraction paradigm, mismatch design, violation-based studies, various forms of priming, the mismatch negativity is a rigorously documented ERP component frequently used in neurolinguistic experiments
Neurolinguistics
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An image of neural pathways in the brain taken using
diffusion tensor imaging
Neurolinguistics
–
Surface of the human brain, with
Brodmann areas numbered
Neurolinguistics
–
Images of the brain recorded with
PET (top) and
fMRI (bottom). In the PET image, the red areas are the most active. In the fMRI image, the yellowest areas are the areas that show the greatest difference in activation between two tasks (watching a moving stimulus, versus watching a black screen).
Neurolinguistics
13.
Linguistic prescription
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Linguistic prescription is the practice of elevating one variety or manner of language use over another. It may imply that some forms are incorrect, improper, or illogical, or lack communicative effect, sometimes informed by linguistic purism, these normative practices may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, grammar, semantics, pronunciation, and syntax. They may also include judgments on socially proper and politically correct language use, Linguistic prescriptivism may aim to establish a standard language, teach what a particular society perceives as a correct form, or advise on effective communication. If usage preferences are conservative, prescription might appear resistant to change, if radical. Prescriptive approaches to language are often contrasted with linguistics, which observes. The basis of research is text analysis and field study. Description, however, may include researchers observations of their own language usage, the chief aim of linguistic prescription can be to specify standard language forms in a way that is easily taught and learned. Prescription may apply to most aspects of language, including spelling, grammar, semantics, pronunciation, syntax, while such a lingua franca may evolve by itself, the desire to formulate and define it is widespread in most parts of the world. Writers or communicators often adhere to prescriptive rules to make their communication clearer, similarly, stability of a language over time helps one to understand writings from the past. In addition, it is useful to have a standard so as to be able to decide whether or not a speaker or writer is using an educated form of the language. Linguistic prescription may also be used to impose a political ideology, during the second half of the 20th century, politically motivated efforts driven by various advocacy groups had considerable influence on language use under the broad banner of political correctness. These successfully imposed special rules for anti-sexist, anti-racist or generically anti-discriminatory language, george Orwell criticized the use of euphemisms and convoluted phrasing as a means of hiding insincerity in Politics and the English Language. His fictional Newspeak is a parody of ideologically motivated linguistic prescriptivism, prescription presupposes authorities whose judgment may be followed by other speakers and writers. The Duden grammar has a status for German. Although lexicographers often see their work as purely descriptive, dictionaries are widely regarded as prescriptive authorities, books such as Lynne Trusss Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which argues for stricter adherence to prescriptive punctuation rules, also seek to exert an influence. Linguistic prescription is regulated formally in some places, the Académie française in Paris is a French national body whose recommendations are widely respected, though not legally enforceable there. In Germany and the Netherlands, recent spelling reforms were devised by teams of linguists commissioned by the government, some met with significant dissent, for example the German orthography reform of 1996. Other kinds of authorities exist in specific settings, such as establishing a house style specifying preferred spellings or grammatical forms
Linguistic prescription
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The Royal Spanish Academy, Madrid
Linguistic prescription
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Ptolemaic hieroglyphics from the
Temple of Kom Ombo
Linguistic prescription
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Samuel Johnson, ca. 1772
14.
Origin of language
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The origin of language in the human species has been the topic of scholarly discussions for several centuries. In spite of this, there is no consensus on the origin or age of human language. The topic is difficult to study because of the lack of direct evidence, many argue that the origins of language probably relate closely to the origins of modern human behavior, but there is little agreement about the implications and directionality of this connection. This shortage of evidence has led many scholars to regard the entire topic as unsuitable for serious study. Today, there are numerous hypotheses about how, why, when, despite this, there is scarcely more agreement today than a hundred years ago, when Charles Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection provoked a rash of armchair speculation on the topic. Some theories see language mostly as an innate faculty—largely genetically encoded, other theories regard language as a mainly cultural system—learned through social interaction. Berwick, suggests it is compatible with modern biology. What we do not see is any kind of gradualism in new technologies or innovations like fire, shelters. Berwick and Chomsky therefore suggest language emerged approximately between 200,000 years ago and 60,000 years ago and that leaves us with about 130,000 years, or approximately 5, 000–6,000 generations of time for evolutionary change. This is not overnight in one generation as some have inferred—but neither is it on the scale of geological eons, a majority of linguistic scholars as of 2015 hold continuity-based theories, but they vary in how they envision language development. Others in this intellectual camp—notably Ib Ulbæk—hold that language evolved not from primate communication but from primate cognition, where vocal precursors are concerned, many continuity theorists envisage language evolving from early human capacities for song. Ritual/speech coevolution theory exemplifies this approach, scholars in this intellectual camp point to the fact that even chimpanzees and bonobos have latent symbolic capacities that they rarely—if ever—use in the wild. Because the emergence of language lies so far back in human prehistory, another approach inspects early human fossils, looking for traces of physical adaptation to language use. In some cases, when the DNA of extinct humans can be recovered, a further study by Q. D. Atkinson suggests that successive population bottlenecks occurred as our African ancestors migrated to other areas, leading to a decrease in genetic and phenotypic diversity. Atkinson argues that these bottlenecks also affected culture and language, suggesting that the further away a particular language is from Africa, the fewer phonemes it contains. By way of evidence, Atkinson claims that todays African languages tend to have large numbers of phonemes. Relying heavily on Atkinsons work, a subsequent study has explored the rate at which phonemes develop naturally, the results suggest that language first evolved around 350, 000–150,000 years ago, which is around the time when modern Homo sapiens evolved. In 1861, historical linguist Max Müller published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of spoken language, the bow-wow or cuckoo theory, which Müller attributed to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, saw early words as imitations of the cries of beasts and birds
Origin of language
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"Hmmmmm" redirects here. For the sound, see
Hum (sound).
Origin of language
15.
Origin of speech
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The origin of speech in Homo sapiens is a widely debated and controversial topic. The problems relate to humans unprecedented use of the tongue, lips, other animals vocalise, but do not use the tongue to modulate sounds. The topic is a separate one because language is not necessarily spoken, Speech is in this sense optional, although it is the default modality for language. Uncontroversially, monkeys, apes and humans, like other animals, have evolved specialised mechanisms for producing sound for purposes of social communication. On the other hand, no monkey or ape uses its tongue for such purposes, the term modality means the chosen representational format for encoding and transmitting information. A striking feature of language is that it is modality-independent, should an impaired child be prevented from hearing or producing sound, its innate capacity to master a language may equally find expression in signing. Sign languages of the deaf are independently invented and have all the properties of spoken language except for the modality of transmission. From this it appears that the centres of the human brain must have evolved to function optimally irrespective of the selected modality. Animal communication systems routinely combine visible with audible properties and effects, no vocally impaired whale, dolphin or songbird, for example, could express its song repertoire equally in visual display. Indeed, in the case of communication, message and modality are not capable of being disentangled. Whatever message is being conveyed stems from intrinsic properties of the signal, modality independence should not be confused with the ordinary phenomenon of multimodality. Monkeys and apes rely on a repertoire of species-specific gesture-calls — emotionally expressive vocalisations inseparable from the visual displays which accompany them, humans also have species-specific gesture-calls — laughs, cries, sobs and so forth — together with involuntary gestures accompanying speech. Many animal displays are polymodal in that appears designed to exploit multiple channels simultaneously. The human linguistic property of modality independence is conceptually distinct from this and it allows the speaker to encode the informational content of a message in a single channel, while switching between channels as necessary. Modern city-dwellers switch effortlessly between the word and writing in its various forms — handwriting, typing, e-mail. Whichever modality is chosen, it can transmit the full message content without external assistance of any kind. When talking on the telephone, for example, any accompanying facial or manual gestures, when typing or manually signing, conversely, theres no need to add sounds. Then, when released from the taboo, these same individuals resume narrating stories by the fireside or in the dark, speaking is the default modality for language in all cultures
Origin of speech
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Human vocal tract
Origin of speech
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Places of articulation (passive and active): 1. Exo-labial, 2. Endo-labial, 3. Dental, 4. Alveolar, 5. Post-alveolar, 6. Pre-palatal, 7. Palatal, 8. Velar, 9. Uvular, 10. Pharyngeal, 11. Glottal, 12. Epiglottal, 13. Radical, 14. Postero-dorsal, 15. Antero-dorsal, 16. Laminal, 17. Apical, 18. Sub-apical
Origin of speech
–
Linguistics
Origin of speech
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Birds flocking, an example of
self-organization in biology
16.
Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
Language
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A mural in
Teotihuacan, Mexico (c. 2nd century) depicting a person emitting a
speech scroll from his mouth, symbolizing speech
Language
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Two girls learning
American Sign Language
Language
–
Braille writing represents language in a
tactile form.
Language
–
Two men and a woman having a conversation in
American Sign Language
17.
Noam Chomsky
–
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as the father of modern linguistics, Chomsky is also a figure in analytic philosophy. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism, born to middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. At the age of sixteen he began studies at the University of Pennsylvania, taking courses in linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. From 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard Universitys Society of Fellows and he is credited as the creator or co-creator of the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a role in the decline of behaviorism. Associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism, while expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also became involved in the Linguistics Wars. In collaboration with Edward S. Herman, Chomsky later co-wrote an analysis articulating the propaganda model of media criticism, however, his defense of unconditional freedom of speech—including for Holocaust deniers—generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the early 1980s. Following his retirement from teaching, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the War on Terror. One of the most cited scholars in history, Chomsky has influenced an array of academic fields. Avram Noam Chomsky was born on December 7,1928, in the East Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and his father was William Zev Chomsky, an Ashkenazi Jew originally from Ukraine who had fled to the United States in 1913. Chomskys mother was the Belarusian-born Elsie Simonofsky, a teacher and activist whom William had met while working at Mikveh Israel, Noam was the Chomsky familys first child. His younger brother, David Eli Chomsky, was five years later. The brothers were close, although David was more easygoing while Noam could be very competitive, as a Jew, Chomsky faced anti-semitism as a child, particularly from the Irish and German communities living in Philadelphia. He was substantially influenced by his uncle who owned a newspaper stand in New York City, whenever visiting his uncle, Chomsky frequented left-wing and anarchist bookstores in the city, voraciously reading political literature. He later described his discovery of anarchism as an accident, because it allowed him to become critical of other far-left ideologies, namely Stalinism. Chomskys primary education was at Oak Lane Country Day School, an independent Deweyite institution that focused on allowing its pupils to pursue their own interests in a non-competitive atmosphere. It was here, at age 10, that he wrote his first article, on the spread of fascism, from the age of 12 or 13, he identified more fully with anarchist politics
Noam Chomsky
–
Noam Chomsky at an
antiwar rally in
Vancouver, 2004
Noam Chomsky
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Anarcho-syndicalist
Rudolf Rocker (left) and English democratic socialist
George Orwell (right) were both influences on the young Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
–
Noam Chomsky (1977)
18.
Minimalist program
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In linguistics, the minimalist program is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky presents MP as a program, not as a theory, the MP seeks to be a mode of inquiry characterized by the flexibility of the multiple directions that its minimalism enables. Ultimately, the MP provides a framework used to guide the development of linguistic theory. In minimalism, Chomsky attempts to approach universal grammar from below—that is, for Chomsky, there are minimalist questions, but the answers can be framed in any theory. Of all these questions, the two play the most crucial role are these, – What is language. – Why does it have the properties it has, in other words, the MP works on the assumption that universal grammar constitutes a perfect design in the sense that it contains only what is necessary to meet our conceptual and physical needs. The MP aims to get to know how much of the principles and parameters model can be taken as a result of this hypothetical optimal, in turn, more developed versions of the Principles and Parameters approach provide technical principles from which the MP can be seen to follow. Economy of derivation is a principle stating that only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features. An example of a feature is the plural inflection on regular English nouns. The word dogs can only be used to refer to dogs, not a single dog. Economy of representation is the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose, the exploration of minimalist questions has led to several radical changes in the technical apparatus of transformational generative grammatical theory. Some of the most important are, The generalization of X-bar theory into bare phrase structure, the simplification of representational levels in the grammatical model, eliminating the distinction between deep structure and surface structure in favor of a more explicitly derivational approach. The elimination of the notion of government, the inclusion of a two new points of interaction, namely, a spell-out point between syntax and the interface with the phonological form, and an additional point of interaction with the logical form. The idea that syntactic derivations proceed by clearly delineated stages called phases, a major development of MP inquiry is bare phrase structure, a theory of phrase structure developed by Noam Chomsky. The introduction of BPS has moved the Chomskyan tradition toward the dependency grammar tradition and this theory contrasts with X-bar theory, which preceded it, in four important ways, BPS is explicitly derivational. That is, it is built from the bottom up, bit by bit, in contrast, X-bar theory is representational—a structure for a given construction is built in one fell swoop, and lexical items are inserted into the structure. BPS does not have a preconceived phrasal structure, while in X-bar theory every phrase has a specifier, a head, BPS permits only binary branching, while X-bar theory permits both binary and unary branching. BPS does not distinguish between a head and a terminal, while versions of X-bar theory require such a distinction
Minimalist program
–
Linguistics
19.
Dependency grammar
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Dependency grammar is a class of modern syntactic theories that are all based on the dependency relation and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesnière. Dependency is the notion that linguistic units, e. g. words, are connected to other by directed links. The verb is taken to be the center of clause structure. All other syntactic units are directly or indirectly connected to the verb in terms of the directed links. DGs are distinct from phrase structure grammars since DGs lack phrasal nodes although they acknowledge phrases, structure is determined by the relation between a word and its dependents. Ibn Maḍāʾ, a 12th-century linguist from Córdoba, Andalusia, may have been the first grammarian to use the term dependency in the sense that we use it today. Dependency is also present in the works of Sámuel Brassai, a Hungarian linguist, and of Heimann Hariton Tiktin. Modern dependency grammars, however, begin primarily with the work of Lucien Tesnière, Tesnière was a Frenchman, a polyglot, and a professor of linguistics at the universities in Strasbourg and Montpellier. His major work Éléments de syntaxe structurale was published posthumously in 1959 – he died in 1954, DG has generated a lot of interest in Germany in both theoretical syntax and language pedagogy. Dependency-based systems are increasingly being used to parse natural language and generate tree banks, interest in dependency grammar is growing at present, international conferences on dependency linguistics being a relatively recent development. Dependency is a correspondence, for every element in the sentence. The result of this correspondence is that dependency grammars are word grammars. All that exist are the elements and the dependencies that connect the elements into a structure and this situation should be compared with the constituency relation of phrase structure grammars. Constituency is a correspondence, which means that, for every element in a sentence. The result of difference is that dependency structures are minimal compared to their constituency structure counterparts. These two trees illustrate just two ways to render the dependency and constituency relations. This dependency tree is a tree, i. e. it reflects actual word order. Many dependency trees abstract away from linear order and focus just on hierarchical order and this constituency tree follows the conventions of bare phrase structure, whereby the words themselves are employed as the node labels
Dependency grammar
Dependency grammar
–
Hybrid constituency/dependency tree from the
Quranic Arabic Corpus
Dependency grammar
Dependency grammar
20.
Head-driven phrase structure grammar
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Head-driven phrase structure grammar is a highly lexicalized, constraint-based grammar developed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag. It is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar, HPSG draws from other fields such as computer science and uses Ferdinand de Saussures notion of the sign. It uses a uniform formalism and is organized in a way which makes it attractive for natural language processing. An HPSG grammar includes principles and grammar rules and lexicon entries which are not considered to belong to a grammar. The formalism is based on lexicalism and this means that the lexicon is more than just a list of entries, it is in itself richly structured. Individual entries are marked with types, early versions of the grammar were very lexicalized with few grammatical rules. More recent research has tended to add more and richer rules, the basic type HPSG deals with is the sign. Words and phrases are two different subtypes of sign, a word has two features, and, both of which are split into subfeatures. Signs and rules are formalized as typed feature structures, HPSG generates strings by combining signs, which are defined by their location within a type hierarchy and by their internal feature structure, represented by attribute value matrices. Features take types or lists of types as their values, grammatical rules are largely expressed through the constraints signs place on one another. A signs feature structure describes its phonological, syntactic, and semantic properties, in common notation, AVMs are written with features in upper case and types in italicized lower case. Numbered indices in an AVM represent token identical values, in the simplified AVM for the word walks below, the verbs categorical information is divided into features that describe it and features that describe its arguments. Walks is a sign of type word with a head of type verb, as an intransitive verb, walks has no complement but requires a subject that is a third person singular noun. The semantic value of the subject is co-indexed with the verbs only argument, the following AVM for she represents a sign with a SYNSEM value that could fulfill those requirements. Signs of type phrase unify with one or more children and propagate information upward, the following AVM encodes the immediate dominance rule for a head-subj-phrase, which requires two children, the head child and a non-head child that fulfills the verbs SUBJ constraints. The end result is a sign with a head, empty subcategorization features. Although the actual grammar of HPSG is composed entirely of feature structures, various parsers based on the HPSG formalism have been written and optimizations are currently being investigated. An example of a system analyzing German sentences is provided by the Freie Universität Berlin, in addition the CoreGram project of the Grammar Group of the Freie Universität Berlin provides open source grammars that were implemented in the TRALE system
Head-driven phrase structure grammar
–
Contents
21.
Link grammar
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Link grammar is a theory of syntax by Davy Temperley and Daniel Sleator which builds relations between pairs of words, rather than constructing constituents in a phrase structure hierarchy. Link grammar is similar to grammar, but dependency grammar includes a head-dependent relationship. Colored Multiplanar Link Grammar is an extension of LG allowing crossing relations between pairs of words, the relationship between words is indicated with link types, thus making the Link grammar closely related to certain categorial grammars. For example, in a language like English, the verb would look left to form a subject link. Nouns would look right to complete the link, or left to complete the object link. In a subject–object–verb language like Persian, the verb would look left to form a link. Nouns would look to the right for both subject and object links, Link grammar connects the words in a sentence with links, similar in form to a catena. Unlike the catena or a dependency grammar, the marking of the head-dependent relationship is optional for most languages. That is, in English, the relationship is obvious, in that the subject is almost always to the left of the verb. In the case of inversion, a distinct link type is employed. For free word-order languages, this can no longer hold, Link grammar also differs from traditional dependency grammars by allowing cyclic relations between words. Thus, for example, there can be links indicating both the verb of a sentence, the head subject of the sentence, as well as a link between the subject and the verb. These three links thus form a cycle, cycles are useful in constraining what might otherwise be ambiguous parses, cycles help tighten up the set of allowable parses of a sentence. For example, in the parse +---->WV--->+ +--Wd--+-Ss-+--Pa--+ | | | | LEFT-WALL he runs fast the LEFT-WALL indicates the start of the sentence, the directional WV link points at the head verb of the sentence, it is the Wall-Verb link. The Wd link indicates the head noun of the sentence, the link type Wd indicates both that it connects to the wall and that the sentence is a declarative sentence. The Ss link indicates the relationship, the lower-case s indicating that the subject is singular. Note that the WV, Wd and Ss links for a cycle, the Pa link connects the verb to a complement, the lower-case a indicating that it is a predicative adjective in this case. Parsing is performed in analogy to assembling a puzzle from puzzle pieces
Link grammar
–
AbiWord checks grammar using Link Grammar
22.
Government and binding theory
–
Government and binding is a theory of syntax and a phrase structure grammar in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s. This theory is a revision of his earlier theories and was later revised in The Minimalist Program and several subsequent papers. Although there is a literature on government and binding theory which is not written by Chomsky. GB was the first theory to be based on the principles and parameters model of language, the main application of the government relation concerns the assignment of case. Government is defined as follows, A governs B if and only if A is a governor and A m-commands B, governors are heads of the lexical categories and tensed I. A m-commands B if A does not dominate B and B does not dominate A and the first maximal projection of A dominates B, where the maximal projection of a head X is XP. Binding can be defined as follows, An element α binds an element β if and only if α c-commands β, consider the sentence Johni saw hisi mother, which is diagrammed below using simple phrase structure trees. The NP John c-commands his because the first parent of the NP, S, John and his are also coreferential, therefore John binds his. On the other hand, in the ungrammatical sentence *The mother of Johni likes himselfi, John does not c-command himself, the importance of binding is shown in the grammaticality of the following sentences, *Johni saw himi. Binding is used, along with particular binding principles, to explain the ungrammaticality of those statements, the applicable rules are called Binding Principle A, Binding Principle B, and Binding Principle C. Principle A, an anaphor must be bound in its governing category, since himself is not c-commanded by John in sentence, Principle A is violated. Principle B, a pronoun must be free within its governing category, in sentence, him is bound by John, violating Principle B. Principle C, an R-expression must be free, r-expressions are referential expressions, unlike pronouns and anaphora, they independently refer, i. e. pick out entities in the world. In sentence, the first instance of John binds the second, note that Principles A and B refer to governing categories—domains which limit the scope of binding. The definition of a governing category laid out in Lectures on Government and Binding is complex, introduction to Government and Binding Theory. A step-by-step introduction to the Government and Binding theory of syntax
Government and binding theory
23.
X-bar theory
–
X-bar theory is a theory of syntactic category formation. The letter X is used to signify an arbitrary lexical category, thus, the X may become an N for noun, a V for verb, an A for adjective, or a P for preposition. The term X-bar is derived from the notation representing this structure, certain structures are represented by X. Because this may be difficult to typeset, this is written as X′, using the prime symbol or with superscript numerals as exponents. In English, however, this is read as X bar. The notation XP stands for X Phrase, and is at the equivalent level of X-bar-bar, written X″ or X2, X-bar theory was first proposed by Noam Chomsky, building on Zellig Harriss 1951 approach to categories, and further developed by Ray Jackendoff. X-bar theory was incorporated into both transformational and nontransformational theories of syntax, including GB, GPSG, LFG, and HPSG, recent work in the Minimalist Program has largely abandoned X-bar schemata in favor of Bare Phrase Structure approaches. There are three syntax assembly rules which form the basis of X-bar theory and these rules can be expressed in English, as immediate dominance rules for natural language, or visually as parse trees. All three representations are presented below, an X Phrase consists of an optional specifier and an X-bar, in any order, XP →, X′ XP XP / \ or / \ spec X X spec 2. One kind of X-bar consists of an X-bar and an adjunct, in order, Not all XPs contain X′s with adjuncts. X X / \ or / \ X adjunct adjunct X3, however, in any given language, usually only one handedness for each rule is observed. The above example maps naturally onto the left-to-right phrase order used in English, note that a complement-containing X may be distinguished from an adjunct-containing X by the fact that the complement has an X as a sibling, whereas an adjunct has X-bar as a sibling. The noun phrase the cat might be rendered like this, NP / \ Det N | | the N | cat The word the is a determiner, the head is the determiner which projects into a determiner phrase. The word cat is the phrase which acts as the complement of the determiner phrase. More recently, it has suggested that D is the head of the noun phrase. Note that branches with empty specifiers, adjuncts, complements, and heads are often omitted, the DetP and NP above have no adjuncts or complements, so they end up being very linear. In English, specifiers precede the X-bar that contains the head, thus, determiners always precede their nouns if they are in the same noun phrase. Other languages use different word order, for more complex utterances, different theories of grammar assign X-bar theory elements to phrase types in different ways
X-bar theory
–
This article needs additional citations for
verification. Please help improve this article by
adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2012)
24.
Government and binding
–
Government and binding is a theory of syntax and a phrase structure grammar in the tradition of transformational grammar developed principally by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s. This theory is a revision of his earlier theories and was later revised in The Minimalist Program and several subsequent papers. Although there is a literature on government and binding theory which is not written by Chomsky. GB was the first theory to be based on the principles and parameters model of language, the main application of the government relation concerns the assignment of case. Government is defined as follows, A governs B if and only if A is a governor and A m-commands B, governors are heads of the lexical categories and tensed I. A m-commands B if A does not dominate B and B does not dominate A and the first maximal projection of A dominates B, where the maximal projection of a head X is XP. Binding can be defined as follows, An element α binds an element β if and only if α c-commands β, consider the sentence Johni saw hisi mother, which is diagrammed below using simple phrase structure trees. The NP John c-commands his because the first parent of the NP, S, John and his are also coreferential, therefore John binds his. On the other hand, in the ungrammatical sentence *The mother of Johni likes himselfi, John does not c-command himself, the importance of binding is shown in the grammaticality of the following sentences, *Johni saw himi. Binding is used, along with particular binding principles, to explain the ungrammaticality of those statements, the applicable rules are called Binding Principle A, Binding Principle B, and Binding Principle C. Principle A, an anaphor must be bound in its governing category, since himself is not c-commanded by John in sentence, Principle A is violated. Principle B, a pronoun must be free within its governing category, in sentence, him is bound by John, violating Principle B. Principle C, an R-expression must be free, r-expressions are referential expressions, unlike pronouns and anaphora, they independently refer, i. e. pick out entities in the world. In sentence, the first instance of John binds the second, note that Principles A and B refer to governing categories—domains which limit the scope of binding. The definition of a governing category laid out in Lectures on Government and Binding is complex, introduction to Government and Binding Theory. A step-by-step introduction to the Government and Binding theory of syntax
Government and binding
–
Contents
25.
Chomsky hierarchy
–
In the formal languages of computer science and linguistics, the Chomsky hierarchy is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars. This hierarchy of grammars was described by Noam Chomsky in 1956 and it is also named after Marcel-Paul Schützenberger, who played a crucial role in the development of the theory of formal languages. A rule may be applied by replacing an occurrence of the symbols on its side with those that appear on its right-hand side. A sequence of rule applications is called a derivation, such a grammar defines the formal language, all words consisting solely of terminal symbols which can be reached by a derivation from the start symbol. Nonterminals are often represented by letters, terminals by lowercase letters. For example, the grammar with terminals, nonterminals, production rules S → AB S → ε A → aS B → b and start symbol S, other sequences that can be derived from this grammar are, ideas hate great linguists, and ideas generate. While these sentences are nonsensical, they are syntactically correct, a syntactically incorrect sentence cannot be derived from this grammar. The following table summarizes each of Chomskys four types of grammars, the class of language it generates, the type of automaton that recognizes it, and the form its rules must have. Note that the set of corresponding to recursive languages is not a member of this hierarchy. Every regular language is context-free, every context-free language is context-sensitive, every context-sensitive language is recursive, Type-0 grammars include all formal grammars. They generate exactly all languages that can be recognized by a Turing machine and these languages are also known as the recursively enumerable or Turing-recognizable languages. Note that this is different from the languages, which can be decided by an always-halting Turing machine. Type-1 grammars generate the context-sensitive languages and these grammars have rules of the form α A β → α γ β with A a nonterminal and α, β and γ strings of terminals and/or nonterminals. The strings α and β may be empty, but γ must be nonempty, the rule S → ϵ is allowed if S does not appear on the right side of any rule. The languages described by these grammars are exactly all languages that can be recognized by a linear bounded automaton Type-2 grammars generate the context-free languages and these are defined by rules of the form A → γ with A a nonterminal and γ a string of terminals and/or nonterminals. These languages are exactly all languages that can be recognized by a non-deterministic pushdown automaton, often a subset of grammars are used to make parsing easier, such as by an LL parser. Type-3 grammars generate the regular languages, such a grammar restricts its rules to a single nonterminal on the left-hand side and a right-hand side consisting of a single terminal, possibly followed by a single nonterminal. Alternatively, the side of the grammar can consist of a single terminal
Chomsky hierarchy
–
Set inclusions described by the Chomsky hierarchy
26.
Tree structure
–
A tree structure or tree diagram is a way of representing the hierarchical nature of a structure in a graphical form. A tree structure is conceptual, and appears in several forms, for a discussion of tree structures in specific fields, see Tree for computer science, insofar as it relates to graph theory, see tree, or also tree. Other related pages are listed below, the tree elements are called nodes. The lines connecting elements are called branches, nodes without children are called leaf nodes, end-nodes, or leaves. Every finite tree structure has a member that has no superior and this member is called the root or root node. The root is the starting node, but the converse is not true, infinite tree structures may or may not have a root node. The names of relationships between nodes model the kinship terminology of family relations, the gender-neutral names parent and child have largely displaced the older father and son terminology, although the term uncle is still used for other nodes at the same level as the parent. A nodes parent is a one step higher in the hierarchy. Sibling nodes share the same parent node, a nodes uncles are siblings of that nodes parent. A node that is connected to all nodes is called an ancestor. The connected lower-level nodes are descendants of the ancestor node, in the example, encyclopedia is the parent of science and culture, its children. Art and craft are siblings, and children of culture, which is their parent, also, encyclopedia, as the root of the tree, is the ancestor of science, culture, art and craft. Finally, science, art and craft, as leaves, are ancestors of no other node, the Oxford English Dictionary records use of both the terms tree structure and tree-diagram from 1965 in Noam Chomskys Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. In a tree there is one and only one path from any point to any other point. Computer science uses tree structures extensively For a formal definition see set theory, internet, usenet hierarchy Document Object Models logical structure, Yahoo. Almost always, these boil down to variations, or combinations, of a few basic styles, Classical node-link diagrams, nested sets that use enclosure/containment to show parenthood, examples include TreeMaps and fractal maps. Layered icicle diagrams that use alignment/adjacency, lists or diagrams that use indentation, sometimes called outlines or tree views. A correspondence to nested parentheses was first noticed by Sir Arthur Cayley, trees can also be represented radially
Tree structure
–
The original
Encyclopédie used a tree diagram to show the way in which its subjects were ordered.
Tree structure
–
A tree structure showing the possible hierarchical organization of an encyclopedia.
27.
Words
–
In linguistics, a word is the smallest element that can be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content. This contrasts deeply with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning, a word may consist of a single morpheme, or several, whereas a morpheme may not be able to stand on its own as a word. A complex word will typically include a root and one or more affixes, words can be put together to build larger elements of language, such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. The term word may refer to a word or to a written word. Spoken words are made up of units of sound called phonemes, the difficulty of deciphering a word depends on the language. Dictionaries categorize a languages lexicon into lemmas and these can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a word in the opinion of the writers of that language. The most appropriate means of measuring the length of a word is by counting its syllables or morphemes, when a word has multiple definitions or multiple senses, it may result in confusion in a debate or discussion. Leonard Bloomfield introduced the concept of Minimal Free Forms in 1926, words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. However, some words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves. Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or semantic primes, according to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations. In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax, words are construed as bundles of features that are united into a structure with form. For example, the word koalas has semantic features, category features, number features, phonological features, the task of defining what constitutes a word involves determining where one word ends and another word begins—in other words, identifying word boundaries. There are several ways to determine where the boundaries of spoken language should be placed, Potential pause, A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries, however, this method is not foolproof, the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words, or fail to separate two or more closely linked words. Indivisibility, A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, thus, I have lived in this village for ten years might become My family and I have lived in this little village for about ten or so years. These extra words will tend to be added in the boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word, similarly, some have separable affixes, in the German sentence Ich komme gut zu Hause an, the verb ankommen is separated. Phonetic boundaries, Some languages have rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be
Words
–
Letters and words
28.
Noun
–
A noun is a word that functions as the name of some specific thing or set of things, such as living creatures, objects, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas. Linguistically, a noun is a member of a large, open part of whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause. Lexical categories are defined in terms of the ways in which their members combine with other kinds of expressions, the syntactic rules for nouns differ from language to language. In English, nouns are words which can occur with articles and attributive adjectives. Word classes were described by Sanskrit grammarians from at least the 5th century BC, in Yāskas Nirukta, the noun is one of the four main categories of words defined. The Ancient Greek equivalent was ónoma, referred to by Plato in the Cratylus dialog, the term used in Latin grammar was nōmen. All of these terms for noun were also words meaning name, the English word noun is derived from the Latin term, through the Anglo-Norman noun. The word classes were defined partly by the forms that they take. In Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, for example, nouns are categorized by gender and inflected for case, because adjectives share these three grammatical categories, adjectives are placed in the same class as nouns. Similarly, the Latin nōmen includes both nouns and adjectives, as originally did the English word noun, the two types being distinguished as nouns substantive and nouns adjective, many European languages use a cognate of the word substantive as the basic term for noun. Nouns in the dictionaries of languages are demarked by the abbreviation s. or sb. instead of n. which may be used for proper nouns or neuter nouns instead. In English, some authors use the word substantive to refer to a class that includes both nouns and noun phrases. It can also be used as a counterpart to attributive when distinguishing between a noun being used as the head of a phrase and a noun being used as a noun adjunct. For example, the knee can be said to be used substantively in my knee hurts. Nouns have sometimes been defined in terms of the categories to which they are subject. Such definitions tend to be language-specific, since nouns do not have the categories in all languages. Nouns are frequently defined, particularly in contexts, in terms of their semantic properties. Nouns are described as words that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, quantity, however this type of definition has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being uninformative
Noun
–
Adjectives
29.
Verb
–
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action, an occurrence, or a state of being. In the usual description of English, the form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected to encode tense, aspect, mood, a verb may also agree with the person, gender or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses, present, to indicate that an action is being carried out, past, to indicate that an action has been done, future, in languages where the verb is inflected, it often agrees with its primary argument in person, number or gender. With the exception of the verb to be, English shows distinctive agreements only in the person singular, present tense form of verbs. The rest of the persons are not distinguished in the verb, Latin and the Romance languages inflect verbs for tense–aspect–mood, and they agree in person and number with the subject. Verbs vary by type, and each type is determined by the kinds of words that accompany it, classified by the number of their valency arguments, usually three basic types are distinguished, intransitives, transitives, ditransitives and double transitive verbs. In addition, verbs can be nonfinite, namely, not inflected for tense, an intransitive verb is one that does not have a direct object. Intransitive verbs may be followed by an adverb or end a sentence, for example, The woman spoke softly. The athlete ran faster than the official, a transitive verb is followed by a noun or noun phrase. These noun phrases are not called predicate nouns, but are called direct objects because they refer to the object that is being acted upon. For example, My friend read the newspaper, the teenager earned a speeding ticket. A way to identify a verb is to invert the sentence. For example, The newspaper was read by my friend, a speeding ticket was earned by the teenager. Ditransitive verbs precede either two noun phrases or a phrase and then a prepositional phrase often led by to or for. For example, The players gave their teammates high fives, the players gave high fives to their teammates. When two noun phrases follow a transitive verb, the first is an object, that which is receiving something, and the second is a direct object. Indirect objects can be noun phrases or prepositional phrases, double transitive verbs are followed by a noun phrase that serves as a direct object and then a second noun phrase, adjective, or infinitive phrase
Verb
–
A single-word verb in
Spanish contains information about time (past, present, future), person and number. The process of grammatically modifying a verb to express this information is called
conjugation.
30.
Noun phrase
–
A noun phrase or nominal phrase is a phrase which has a noun as its head word, or which performs the same grammatical function as such a phrase. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occurring phrase type, Noun phrases often function as verb subjects and objects, as predicative expressions, and as the complements of prepositions. Noun phrases can be embedded inside each other, for instance, in some modern theories of grammar, noun phrases with determiners are analyzed as having the determiner rather than the noun as their head, they are then referred to as determiner phrases. Some examples of noun phrases are underlined in the sentences below, the head noun appears in bold. The election-year politics are annoying for many people, almost every sentence contains at least one noun phrase. Current economic weakness may be a result of energy prices. Noun phrases can be identified by the possibility of pronoun substitution and this sentence contains two noun phrases. The subject noun phrase that is present in this sentence is long, Noun phrases can be embedded in other noun phrases. They can be embedded in them, a string of words that can be replaced by a single pronoun without rendering the sentence grammatically unacceptable is a noun phrase. As to whether the string must contain at least two words, see the following section, traditionally, a phrase is understood to contain two or more words. The traditional progression in the size of units is word < phrase < clause. However, many schools of syntax – especially those that have been influenced by X-bar theory – make no such restriction. Here many single words are judged to be based on a desire for theory-internal consistency. A phrase is deemed to be a word or a combination of words that appears in a set syntactic position, on this understanding of phrases, the nouns and pronouns in bold in the following sentences are noun phrases, He saw someone. The words in bold are called phrases since they appear in the positions where multiple-word phrases can appear. This practice takes the constellation to be rather than the words themselves. The word he, for instance, functions as a pronoun, the phrase structure grammars of the Chomskyan tradition are primary examples of theories that apply this understanding of phrases. Other grammars, for instance dependency grammars, are likely to reject this approach to phrases, for them, phrases must contain two or more words
Noun phrase
–
"Those five beautiful shiny Arkansas Black apples sitting on the chair" is a noun phrase of which apples is the
head. To test, a single pronoun can replace the whole noun phrase, as in "They are delicious".
31.
Verb phrase
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In linguistics, a verb phrase is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and its dependents—objects, complements and other modifiers—but not always including the subject. A verb phrase is similar to what is considered a predicate in more traditional grammars, phrase structure grammars acknowledge both types, but dependency grammars treat the subject as just another verbal dependent, and they do not recognize the finite verbal phrase constituent. Understanding verb phrase analysis depends upon knowing which theory obtains in context, in phrase structure grammars such as generative grammar, the verb phrase is one headed by a verb. It may be composed of only a verb, but typically it consists of combinations of main and auxiliary verbs, plus optional specifiers, complements. For example, Yankee batters hit the ball enough to win their first World Series since 2000. Mary saw the man through the window, the third example presents three elements, the main verb gave, the noun Mary, and the noun phrase a book, all which comprise the verb phrase. Note, the verb phrase described here corresponds to the predicate of traditional grammar, phrase structure grammars view both finite and nonfinite verb phrases as constituent phrases and, consequently, do not draw any key distinction between them. Dependency grammars are much different in this regard, while phrase structure grammars acknowledge both finite and non-finite VPs as constituents, dependency grammars reject the former. That is, dependency grammars acknowledge only non-finite VPs as constituents, for example, John has finished the work. – Finite VP in bold John has finished the work, similar examples, They do not want to try that. – Finite VP in bold They do not want to try that, – One non-finite VP in bold They do not want to try that. They do, however, readily acknowledge the existence of non-finite VPs as constituents, the dependency tree on the right, in contrast, does not acknowledge a finite VP constituent, since there is no complete subtree there that corresponds to has finished the work. Note that the analyses agree concerning the non-finite VP finished the work, dependency grammars point to the results of many standard constituency tests to back up their stance. For instance, topicalization, pseudoclefting, and answer ellipsis suggest that non-finite VP does, – Topicalization *What John has done is has finished the work. – Pseudoclefting What has John done, – Answer ellipsis The * indicates that the sentence is bad. These data must be compared to the results for non-finite VP. and finished the work, – Topicalization What John has done is finished the work. – Pseudoclefting What has John done, – Answer ellipsis The strings in bold are the ones in focus. Attempts to in some sense isolate the finite VP fail, for example, in the following sentences only the words in bold would be used in forming the verb phrase, John has given Mary a book
Verb phrase
32.
Phrase marker
–
A parse tree or parsing tree or derivation tree or concrete syntax tree is an ordered, rooted tree that represents the syntactic structure of a string according to some context-free grammar. The term parse tree itself is used primarily in computational linguistics, parse trees concretely reflect the syntax of the input language, making them distinct from the abstract syntax trees used in computer programming. They are also distinct from the diagrams, such as Reed-Kellogg diagrams. Parse trees are constructed based on either the constituency relation of constituency grammars or the dependency relation of dependency grammars. Parse trees may be generated for sentences in languages, as well as during processing of computer languages. A related concept is that of phrase marker or P-marker, as used in transformational generative grammar, a phrase marker is a linguistic expression marked as to its phrase structure. This may be presented in the form of a tree, or as a bracketed expression, phrase markers are generated by applying phrase structure rules, and themselves are subject to further transformational rules. The constituency-based parse trees of constituency grammars distinguish between terminal and non-terminal nodes, the interior nodes are labeled by non-terminal categories of the grammar, while the leaf nodes are labeled by terminal categories. The following abbreviations are used in the tree, S for sentence, the first NP, a single noun John, serves as the subject of the sentence. The second one is the object of the sentence, VP for verb phrase, which serves as the predicate V for verb. In this case, its a transitive verb hit, D for determiner, in this instance the definite article the N for noun Each node in the tree is either a root node, a branch node, or a leaf node. A root node is a node doesnt have any branches on top of it. Within a sentence, there is only one root node. A branch node is a node that connects to two or more daughter nodes. A leaf node, however, is a node that does not dominate other nodes in the tree. S is the node, NP and VP are branch nodes, and John, hit, the. The leaves are the tokens of the sentence. A node can also be referred to as parent node or a child node, a parent node is one that has at least one other node linked by a branch under it
Phrase marker
Phrase marker
33.
Music theory
–
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. The term is used in three ways in music, though all three are interrelated. The first is what is otherwise called rudiments, currently taught as the elements of notation, of key signatures, of time signatures, of rhythmic notation, Theory in this sense is treated as the necessary preliminary to the study of harmony, counterpoint, and form. The second is the study of writings about music from ancient times onwards, Music theory is frequently concerned with describing how musicians and composers make music, including tuning systems and composition methods among other topics. However, this medieval discipline became the basis for tuning systems in later centuries, Music theory as a practical discipline encompasses the methods and concepts composers and other musicians use in creating music. The development, preservation, and transmission of music theory in this sense may be found in oral and written music-making traditions, musical instruments, and other artifacts. In ancient and living cultures around the world, the deep and long roots of music theory are clearly visible in instruments, oral traditions, and current music making. Many cultures, at least as far back as ancient Mesopotamia and ancient China, have also considered music theory in more formal ways such as written treatises, in modern academia, music theory is a subfield of musicology, the wider study of musical cultures and history. Etymologically, music theory is an act of contemplation of music, from the Greek θεωρία, a looking at, viewing, contemplation, speculation, theory, also a sight, a person who researches, teaches, or writes articles about music theory is a music theorist. University study, typically to the M. A. or Ph. D level, is required to teach as a music theorist in a US or Canadian university. Methods of analysis include mathematics, graphic analysis, and especially analysis enabled by Western music notation, comparative, descriptive, statistical, and other methods are also used. See for instance Paleolithic flutes, Gǔdí, and Anasazi flute, several surviving Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets include musical information of a theoretical nature, mainly lists of intervals and tunings. The scholar Sam Mirelman reports that the earliest of these dates from before 1500 BCE. Further, All the Mesopotamian texts are united by the use of a terminology for music that, much of Chinese music history and theory remains unclear. The earliest texts about Chinese music theory are inscribed on the stone and they include more than 2800 words describing theories and practices of music pitches of the time. The bells produce two intertwined pentatonic scales three tones apart with additional pitches completing the chromatic scale, Chinese theory starts from numbers, the main musical numbers being twelve, five and eight. Twelve refers to the number of pitches on which the scales can be constructed, the Lüshi chunqiu from about 239 BCE recalls the legend of Ling Lun. On order of the Yellow Emperor, Ling Lun collected twelve bamboo lengths with thick, blowing on one of these like a pipe, he found its sound agreeable and named it huangzhong, the Yellow Bell
Music theory
–
Ancient Egyptian musicians playing lutes in an ensemble.
Music theory
–
Pythagoras and
Philolaus engaged in theoretical investigations, in a woodcut from
Franchinus Gaffurius, Theorica musicæ (1492)
Music theory
–
A set of bells from China, 5th Century BCE.
Music theory
–
Barbershop quartets, such as this US Navy group, sing 4-part pieces, made up of a melody line (normally the second-highest voice, called the "lead") and 3 harmony parts.
34.
Musical analysis
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Musical analysis is the means of answering directly the question How does it work. The method employed to answer this question, and indeed exactly what is meant by the question, differs from analyst to analyst, according to Ian Bent, its emergence as an approach and method can be traced back to the 1750s. However it existed as a tool, albeit an auxiliary one. Adolf Bernhard Marx was influential in formalising concepts about composition and music understanding towards the half of the 19th century. The principle of analysis has been criticized, especially by composers, such as Edgard Varèses claim that, to explain by means of is to decompose. Some analysts, such as Donald Francis Tovey have presented their analyses in prose, others, such as Hans Keller used no prose commentary at all in some of their work. There have been many notable analysts other than Tovey and Keller, ernst Kurth coined the term of developmental motif. Rudolph Réti is notable for tracing the development of melodic motifs through a work. Insights from the social considerations may then yield insight into analysis methods, Edward Cone argues that musical analysis lies in between description and prescription. Analysis must, rather, provide insight into listening without forcing a description of a piece that cannot be heard, many techniques are used to analyze music. Even absolute music may be viewed as a, metaphor for the universe, or nature as, the process of analysis often involves breaking the piece down into relatively simpler and smaller parts. Often, the way these parts fit together and interact with other is then examined. This process of discretization or segmentation is often considered, as by Jean-Jacques Nattiez and we actually hear how these songs resonate with one another, comment upon and affect one another. in a way, the music speaks for itself. This analytic bent is most obvious in recomposition including the mash-ups of popular music, an analysis can be conducted on a single piece of music, on a portion or element of a piece or on a collection of pieces. A musicologists stance is his or her analytical situation. tackles only the immanent configuration of the work, allen Fortes musical set theory. proceed from an analysis of the neutral level to drawing conclusions about the poietic. Reti, analysis of Debussys la Cathédrale engloutie The reverse of the previous, taking a poietic document—letters, plans, and analyzes the work in the light of this information. Paul Mie, stylistic analysis of Beethoven in terms of the sketches The most common, grounded in perceptive introspection, obviously how experimental psychologists would work The case in which an immanent analysis is equally relevant to the poietic as to the esthesic. On the other hand, Fay argues that, analytic discussions of music are often concerned with processes that are not immediately perceivable and it may be that the analyst is concerned merely with applying a collection of rules concerning practice, or with the description of the compositional process
Musical analysis
–
Debussy Pelleas et Melisande prelude opening. Play (
help ·
info)
35.
Ray Jackendoff
–
Ray Jackendoff is an American linguist. He is also professor of philosophy, Seth Merrin Chair in the Humanities and with Daniel Dennett, jackendoffs research deals with the semantics of natural language, its bearing on the formal structure of cognition and its lexical and syntactic expression. His theory of conceptual semantics developed into a theory on the foundations of language. Much earlier, in his 1983 Semantics and Cognition, he was one of the first linguists to integrate the vision faculty into his account of meaning and human language. Jackendoff studied under the famed linguists Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before moving to Tufts in 2005, Jackendoff was professor of linguistics and Chair of the Linguistics Program at Brandeis University from 1971 to 2005. During the 2009 spring semester, he was a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Jackendoff was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 2003 and he is the 2014 recipient of the David E. Rumelhart Prize, the premier award in the field of cognitive science. Jackendoff takes syntax, semantics and phonology all to be generative, thus, the task of his theory is to formalize the proper interface rules. Unlike many of the cognitive semantics approaches, he contends that neither syntax alone should determine semantics, Syntax need only interface with semantics to the degree necessary to produce properly ordered phonological output. Jackendoff, together with Fred Lerdahl, has been interested in the capacity for music. In particular, music has structure as well as grammar, similar questions have also been raised regarding human language, although there are differences. X-Bar Syntax, A Study of Phrase Structure, a Generative Theory of Tonal Music. CS1 maint, Multiple names, authors list Jackendoff, Ray, languages of the Mind, Essays on Mental Representation. Patterns in the Mind, Language and Human Nature, the Architecture of the Language Faculty. Foundations of Language, Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution, culicover, Peter W. & Ray Jackendoff. CS1 maint, Multiple names, authors list Jackendoff, Ray, Language, Consciousness, Culture, Essays on Mental Structure. Meaning and the Lexicon, The Parallel Architecture 1975–2010, a Users Guide to Thought and Meaning. Possible stages in the evolution of the capacity, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol.3
Ray Jackendoff
–
Ray Jackendoff
36.
Schenkerian analysis
–
Schenkerian analysis is a method of musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker. The goal of a Schenkerian analysis is to interpret the structure of a tonal work. The theorys basic tenets can be viewed as a way of defining tonality in music, a Schenkerian analysis of a passage of music shows hierarchical relationships among its pitches, and draws conclusions about the structure of the passage from this hierarchy. The analysis makes use of a symbolic form of musical notation that Schenker devised to demonstrate various techniques of elaboration. A key concept in Schenkers theory of tonality is that of tonal space, the graph of the Ursatz is arrhythmic, as is a strict-counterpoint cantus firmus exercise. Even at intermediate levels of the reduction, rhythmic notation shows not rhythm, an analysis reflects the musical perceptions and intuitions of the analyst, developed in accordance with particular principles as established by Schenker and subsequent music theorists. Schenker was convinced of the superiority of music of the common practice period and this led him to seek the key to an understanding of music in the traditional discipline of counterpoint, the type of theory the Masters themselves had studied. Schenkers project was to show that free composition was an elaboration, the analyst is expected to develop a distance hearing, a structural hearing. The tonic triad, that from which the work as a whole arises, takes its model in the harmonic series, however, the mere duplication of nature cannot be the object of human endeavour. Therefore the overtone series is transformed into a succession, a horizontal arpeggiation, thus the harmonic series is condensed, abbreviated for the purposes of art. Linking the triad to the series, Schenker merely pays lip service to an idea common in the early 20th century. The explanation becomes much easier if artistic intention rather than Nature herself is credited with the origin of the minor mode, the basic component of Schenkerian harmony is the Stufe, i. e. a chord having gained structural significance. Schenker’s theory is monotonal, the Ursatz, as the unfolding of the tonic triad. Local tonicisation may arise when a scale-step is elaborated to the point of becoming a local tonic, two-voice counterpoint remains for Schenker the model of strict writing. Free composition is a usage of the laws of strict counterpoint. One of the aims of the analysis is to trace how the work remains subject to laws at the deepest level. One aspect of strict, two-voice writing that appears to span Schenker’s theory throughout the years of its elaboration is the rule of fluent melody and this idea is at the origin of that of linear progression and, more specifically, of that of the Fundamental Line. Ursatz is the name given by Schenker to the structure in its simplest form
Schenkerian analysis
–
The minimal Ursatz: a line supported by an arpeggiation of the bass Play (
help ·
info).
37.
Digital infinity
–
Lost Boys Games was a Dutch video game developer, it was a subsidiary of the large Dutch multimedia conglomerate Lost Boys. In 2000 Lost Boys Games was formed by the merger of three Dutch-based developers, Orange Games of Jazz Jackrabbit fame, Digital Infinity and Formula and it was renamed in 2002 to Guerrilla Games, that made name with the Killzone series. Sony Computer Entertainment acquired Guerrilla Games in 2005, the logo of Lost Boys was a white cactus on a red diamond-shaped background. Lost Boys first made name with the creation of the website for Big Brother - a television show by John de Mol and it also created Big Brother, The Game, that was no more than a Pac-Man clone. Lost Boys Games also had a separate handhelds-division called Formula, under this label it would release four titles, two each for Nintendos Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance handheld gaming consoles. However, the first game showed the Formula game development logo was The Lost Ride. In the same year also Dodgem Arena, the first Dutch PS1 title on the shelves, was released under the Formula label, the logo of Formula was the same as of Lost Boys Games, only the diamond-shaped background was green instead of red
Digital infinity
38.
Phrase structure rules
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They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts, also known as syntactic categories, including both lexical categories and phrasal categories. A grammar that uses phrase structure rules is a type of phrase structure grammar, phrase structure rules are usually of the following form, A → B C meaning that the constituent A is separated into the two subconstituents B and C. Some examples for English are as follows, S ⟶ NP VP NP ⟶ N1 N1 ⟶ N1 The first rule reads, the second rule reads, A noun phrase consists of an optional Det followed by an N. The third rule means that an N can be preceded by an optional AP, the round brackets indicate optional constituents. If the rules are correct, then any sentence produced in this way ought to be grammatically correct, phrase structure rules break sentences down into their constituent parts. These constituents are often represented as tree structures, the tree for Chomskys sentence can be rendered as follows, A constituent is any word or combination of words that is dominated by a single node. Thus each individual word is a constituent, further, the subject NP Colorless green ideas, the minor NP green ideas, and the VP sleep furiously are constituents. Phrase structure rules and the structures that are associated with them are a form of immediate constituent analysis. In transformational grammar, systems of phrase structure rules are supplemented by transformation rules, an important aspect of phrase structure rules is that they view sentence structure from the top down. The category on the left of the arrow is a greater constituent, constituents are successively broken down into their parts as one moves down a list of phrase structure rules for a given sentence. This top-down view of sentence structure stands in contrast to work done in modern theoretical syntax. In Minimalism for instance, sentence structure is generated from the bottom up, the operation Merge merges smaller constituents to create greater constituents until the greatest constituent is reached. In this regard, theoretical syntax abandoned phrase structure rules long ago, phrase structure rules as they are commonly employed result in a view of sentence structure that is constituency-based. Thus grammars that employ phrase structure rules are constituency grammars, as opposed to dependency grammars, what this means is that for phrase structure rules to be applicable at all, one has to pursue a constituency-based understanding of sentence structure. The constituency relation is a one-to-one-or-more correspondence, for every word in a sentence, there is at least one node in the syntactic structure that corresponds to that word. The dependency relation, in contrast, is a relation, for every word in the sentence. The distinction is illustrated with the trees, The constituency tree on the left could be generated by phrase structure rules. The sentence S is broken down into smaller and smaller constituent parts, the dependency tree on the right could not, in contrast, be generated by phrase structure rules
Phrase structure rules
Phrase structure rules
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Contents
39.
JSTOR
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JSTOR is a digital library founded in 1995. Originally containing digitized back issues of journals, it now also includes books and primary sources. It provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals, more than 8,000 institutions in more than 160 countries have access to JSTOR, most access is by subscription, but some older public domain content is freely available to anyone. William G. Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, JSTOR originally was conceived as a solution to one of the problems faced by libraries, especially research and university libraries, due to the increasing number of academic journals in existence. Most libraries found it prohibitively expensive in terms of cost and space to maintain a collection of journals. By digitizing many journal titles, JSTOR allowed libraries to outsource the storage of journals with the confidence that they would remain available long-term, online access and full-text search ability improved access dramatically. Bowen initially considered using CD-ROMs for distribution, JSTOR was initiated in 1995 at seven different library sites, and originally encompassed ten economics and history journals. JSTOR access improved based on feedback from its sites. Special software was put in place to make pictures and graphs clear, with the success of this limited project, Bowen and Kevin Guthrie, then-president of JSTOR, wanted to expand the number of participating journals. They met with representatives of the Royal Society of London and an agreement was made to digitize the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society dating from its beginning in 1665, the work of adding these volumes to JSTOR was completed by December 2000. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded JSTOR initially, until January 2009 JSTOR operated as an independent, self-sustaining nonprofit organization with offices in New York City and in Ann Arbor, Michigan. JSTOR content is provided by more than 900 publishers, the database contains more than 1,900 journal titles, in more than 50 disciplines. Each object is identified by an integer value, starting at 1. In addition to the site, the JSTOR labs group operates an open service that allows access to the contents of the archives for the purposes of corpus analysis at its Data for Research service. This site offers a facility with graphical indication of the article coverage. Users may create focused sets of articles and then request a dataset containing word and n-gram frequencies and they are notified when the dataset is ready and may download it in either XML or CSV formats. The service does not offer full-text, although academics may request that from JSTOR, JSTOR Plant Science is available in addition to the main site. The materials on JSTOR Plant Science are contributed through the Global Plants Initiative and are only to JSTOR
JSTOR
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The JSTOR front page
40.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
International Standard Book Number
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A 13-digit ISBN, 978-3-16-148410-0, as represented by an
EAN-13 bar code
41.
Heinrich Schenker
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Heinrich Schenker was a music theorist, music critic, teacher, pianist, and composer, best known for his approach to musical analysis, now usually called Schenkerian analysis. Little biographical information about Heinrich Schenker is available from external sources, fortunately, he not only kept many of his personal papers, but maintained a nearly 4000-page diary, which includes many recollections from his early years. Most of the information we have about Schenker stems from this work. Thus far, Hellmut Federhofers Heinrich Schenker is the book to attempt a general biography. Much of the information in this article stems from that work, Schenker was born in Wisniowczyki, Austrian Galicia in 1868 to Johann Schenker and his wife, Julia, both Jews. Schenkers father was a doctor who had allowed to settle in Wisniowczyk. There is very little information about Schenkers parents, Moritz Violin, Schenkers lifelong friend recalled Schenker describing the seriousness of the father, Schenker was the fifth of six siblings, Markus, Rebeka, Wilhelm, a doctor, Schifre, and Moriz, born August 31,1874. There is very little documentation concerning Schenkers childhood years, Schenker himself said nothing about his secondary school education. His musical instincts must have discovered at an early age, for he went to Lemberg and studied with Carl Mikuli. Schenker received a scholarship to move to Vienna, where his family followed, Documents at the University of Vienna show him on the roster the beginning with the 1884/1885 season where he pursued a law degree. In addition to his studies at the University of Vienna, he was enrolled at the Konservatorium of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde from 1887 through 1890. His entrance examination indicated that he initially studied composition with Franz Krenn. Schenker and his father asked that he be exempted from the first years fees, other documents indicate that in his first year Schenker majored in harmony under Anton Bruckner. Schenkers father died in 1887, leaving the family destitute, the teacher closes his classes in harmony, he closes his classes in counterpoint, finishes them off in his own way, but not even the first step toward art has been taken. A footnote adds My teacher, a composer of high renown, used to say on such occasions, Segns, mein Herrn, dass ist die Regl, I, Schenker quotes examples from Bruckners works as examples of badly constructed lines. Schenker had better memories of Ernst Ludwig, Ludwig accepted Schenker on the basis of his initial scholarship. Upon seeing some of Schenkers musical compositions, Ludwig recommended them to the pianist Julius Epstein, later Ludwig sent students to study with Schenker. Schenker remembered Ludwig fondly and thought his teacher would have appreciated Schenkers work, in the 1888–89 season, Schenker studied counterpoint under Bruckner and continued piano study under Ludwig, always receiving the highest grades
Heinrich Schenker
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Grave of Heinrich Schenker in the Jewish section of the
Zentralfriedhof in Vienna
42.
David Pesetsky
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David Michael Pesetsky is an American linguist. He is the Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages and Linguistics and Head of the Department of Linguistics and he received a B. A. in linguistics from Yale in 1977 and a Ph. D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982. Pesetsky has taught at the University of Southern California and the University of Massachusetts Amherst before joining the faculty of MIT in 1988. Pesetsky was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011, and he has published numerous articles and books within the framework of generative grammar. A specialist in syntax, he has published on the properties of wh-movement as well as the theory of argument structure. He has worked extensively on the structure of Russian, and recently has argued that the syntax of tonal music is identical to the structure of language, homepage Works by or about David Pesetsky in libraries
David Pesetsky
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David Pesetsky
43.
Automata theory
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Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automata, as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in computer science and discrete mathematics. The word automata comes from the Greek word αὐτόματα, which means self-acting, the figure at right illustrates a finite-state machine, which belongs to a well-known type of automaton. This automaton consists of states and transitions, as the automaton sees a symbol of input, it makes a transition to another state, according to its transition function, which takes the current state and the recent symbol as its inputs. Automata theory is related to formal language theory. An automaton is a representation of a formal language that may be an infinite set. Automata play a role in theory of computation, compiler construction, artificial intelligence, parsing. Following is a definition of one type of automaton, which attempts to help one grasp the essential concepts involved in automata theory/theories. An automaton is supposed to run on some given sequence of inputs in time steps. An automaton gets one input every step that is picked up from a set of symbols or letters. At any time, the symbols so far fed to the automaton as input, form a sequence of symbols. An automaton contains a set of states. At each instance in time of run, the automaton is in one of its states. At each time step when the automaton reads a symbol, it jumps or transitions to state that is decided by a function that takes the current state. This function is called the transition function, the automaton reads the symbols of the input word one after another and transitions from state to state according to the transition function, until the word is read completely. Once the input word has been read, the automaton is said to have stopped, depending on the final state, its said that the automaton either accepts or rejects an input word. There is a subset of states of the automaton, which is defined as the set of accepting states, if the final state is an accepting state, then the automaton accepts the word. The set of all the words accepted by an automaton is called the language of that automaton, any subset of the language of an automaton is a language recognized by that automaton
Automata theory
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Formal language
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In mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language is a set of strings of symbols together with a set of rules that are specific to it. The alphabet of a language is the set of symbols, letters. The strings formed from this alphabet are called words, and the words belong to a particular formal language are sometimes called well-formed words or well-formed formulas. A formal language is defined by means of a formal grammar such as a regular grammar or context-free grammar. The field of language theory studies primarily the purely syntactical aspects of such languages—that is. Formal language theory sprang out of linguistics, as a way of understanding the syntactic regularities of natural languages. The first formal language is thought to be the one used by Gottlob Frege in his Begriffsschrift, literally meaning concept writing, axel Thues early semi-Thue system, which can be used for rewriting strings, was influential on formal grammars. The elements of an alphabet are called its letters, alphabets may be infinite, however, most definitions in formal language theory specify finite alphabets, and most results only apply to them. A word over an alphabet can be any sequence of letters. The set of all words over an alphabet Σ is usually denoted by Σ*, the length of a word is the number of letters it is composed of. For any alphabet there is one word of length 0, the empty word. By concatenation one can combine two words to form a new word, whose length is the sum of the lengths of the original words, the result of concatenating a word with the empty word is the original word. A formal language L over an alphabet Σ is a subset of Σ*, that is, sometimes the sets of words are grouped into expressions, whereas rules and constraints may be formulated for the creation of well-formed expressions. In computer science and mathematics, which do not usually deal with natural languages, in practice, there are many languages that can be described by rules, such as regular languages or context-free languages. The notion of a formal grammar may be closer to the concept of a language. By an abuse of the definition, a formal language is often thought of as being equipped with a formal grammar that describes it. The following rules describe a formal language L over the alphabet Σ =, Every nonempty string that does not contain + or =, a string containing = is in L if and only if there is exactly one =, and it separates two valid strings of L. A string containing + but not = is in L if, no string is in L other than those implied by the previous rules
Formal language
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Structure of a syntactically well-formed, although nonsensical English sentence (
historical example from Chomsky 1957).
