Edinburgh Advanced Textbooks in Linguistics
Moves beyond the basics of phonetics and phonology and investigates their interaction
- Designed for the advanced student who wants to move beyond the basics but is not yet expert
- Surveys both historical approaches and current theories of the phonology phonetics interface, including structuralist, derivational, and post-derivational approaches
- Examines the roles of both articulation and perception in creating and maintaining phonological patterns
- Includes suggestions for further readings and end-of-chapter questions for use in class discussions
Is speech in the mouth or in the brain? Do we hear with our ears or with our minds? How different can phonology and phonetics be? How similar? Where exactly does the border between them lie?
Examining classic and current linguistic theories of how physical and cognitive factors interact in the mind of the speaker, and in the language system as a whole, Elizabeth Zsiga provides a rigorous guide to the key debates for the advanced student.
An up-to-date introduction to language acquisition for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in linguistics and cognitive science
- Examples from a wide variety of languages including English, Chinese, Dutch, German, Kannada, Portuguese and Spanish
- A clear theoretical stance, adopting Chomskyan generative grammar as a framework
- Summary boxes, exercises and discussion questions at the end of each chapter to improve understanding, generate discussion and encourage reflection
- Appendices of research techniques and resources to aid further study
Helen Goodluck adopts Chomskyan generative grammar as a framework to guide students through the growth of language in a typically developing child. She presents competing viewpoints and introduces the central controversies in the field in order to give students the opportunity to evaluate and reflect on these in relation to the examples and data presented. Summary boxes, exercises, discussion questions, an appendix of research techniques and suggestions for further reading are also included to develop deeper understanding, generate reflective discussion and aid further study.
Taking into consideration recent developments and advances in the field, coverage includes the acquisition of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, the nature of innate knowledge and learning mechanisms and new developments in performance mechanisms. Illustrated with examples from a wide variety of languages, this book presents an accessible and essential guide to first language acquisition.
Introduces the essential principles and techniques of formal semantics
In formal semantics, structure is treated as the essential ingredient in the creation of sentence meaning from individual word meaning. This book introduces some of the foundational concepts, principles and techniques in the formal semantics of natural language and outlines the mathematical principles that underlie linguistics meaning. Using English examples, Yoad Winter presents the most useful tools and concepts of formal semantics in an accessible style and includes a variety of practical exercises so that readers can learn to utilize these tools effectively. For readers with an elementary background in set theory and linguistics or with an interest in mathematical modelling, this fascinating study is an ideal introduction to natural language semantics. Designed as a quick yet thorough introduction to one of the most vibrant areas of research in modern linguistics today this volume reveals the beauty and elegance of the mathematical study of meaning.
- An ideal introduction to natural language semantics
- Includes a wide range of concrete English examples
- Accessible style is aimed at students developing knowledge of formal semantics
A comprehensive introduction to non-classical logics and their use in linguistics
This book will take linguistics students beyond the classical logic used in introductory courses into the variety of non-standard logics that are commonly used in research. It embraces a wide variety of material, including modal logic, partial logic, situation semantics and the growing area of the substructural logics, starting with simple and intuitive concepts. Prior knowledge of mathematical logic is not required as issues are introduced and discussed in clear and precise English before symbolic notation is introduced. The variety of material is organised around one central thread: the tailoring of logical systems to reasoning about different applications in linguistics and beyond.
Key Features:
- Does not presuppose any background in logic or mathematics
- Self-contained: introductory sections give a good grounding in the prerequisites of the course
- Optional discussion of issues and applications to interest more advanced students
- One of the very few non-specialist introductions to the growing area of substructural logic
This textbook discussing morphology and its processes within a general framework that will incorporate the most recent developments in the field, but also in their relation with syntax, lexical semantics and phonology. It pays particular attention to the debate between lexicalism and constructionism, and provides open activities designed to help students start their own original research and stimulate their own thinking over the morphology of their languages beyond what is usually described in published works.
This approach is particularly important because many textbooks ignore some of the most recent developments in syntax when it comes to defining the place of morphology and the lexicon in the architecture of grammar or to providing evidence about the existence of morphology as an independent module. This textbook discusses developments in Construction Grammar and in the Minimalist Program which have helped reframe the discussion about the Lexical Integrity Hypothesis and related issues.
By presenting the latest theories and highlighting the current challenges in morphology, upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students will find this textbook an invigorating and inspiring resource.
Additional Materials and Sources
A gentle introduction to programming for students and researchers interested in conducting computer-based analysis in linguistics, this book is an ideal starting point for linguists approaching programming for the first time. Assuming no background knowledge of programming, the author introduces basic notions and techniques needed for linguistic programming and helps readers to develop their understanding of electronic texts.
The book includes many examples based on diverse topics in linguistics in order to demonstrate the applicability of the concepts at the heart of programming. Practical examples are designed to help the reader to
- Identify basic issues in handling language data, including Unicode processing
- Conduct simple analyses in morphology/morphosyntax, and phonotactics
- Understanding techniques for matching linguistic patterns
- Learn to convert data into formats and data structures suitable for linguistic analysis
- Create frequency lists from corpus materials to gather basic descriptive statistics on texts
- Understand, obtain and 'clean up' web-based data
- Design graphical user interfaces for writing more efficient and easy-to-use analysis tools.
Two different types of exercise help readers to learn to interpret and understand illustrative sample code, and then develop algorithmic thinking and solution strategies through turning a series of instructions into sample programs. Readers will be equipped with the necessary tools for designing their own extended projects.
Key Features
- Ideal introduction for students of linguistics attempting to process corpus materials or literary texts for dissertations, theses or advanced research work
- Linguistic examples throughout the text clearly demonstrate the application of programming theory and techniques
- Coverage ranging from basic to more complex topics and methodologies enables the reader to work at their own pace
- Two chapters on the advantages of modularity and associated issues provide a basis for more advanced projects
- A concluding chapter introduces graphical user interfaces, providing a basis for user-friendly programs and multi-lingual analysis.
