The Mental Corpus

The Mental Corpus
Author: John R. Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2012-05-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199290806

John Taylor argues that an individual's knowledge of a language is a repository of memories. Similarities between items lead to generalizations then used to generate new expressions. He makes a compelling contribution to understanding language and the operations of the mind. The book will appeal to linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists.

The Mental Corpus

The Mental Corpus
Author: John R. Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2012-05-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 019162358X

This book presents a radical reconceptualization of the nature of linguistic knowledge. John Taylor challenges the conventional notion that a language can be understood in terms of the interaction of syntax with a lexicon, the second listing the words and the first the rules for combining them. He proposes instead that an individual's knowledge of a language can be thought of as a repository of memories of linguistic experience. Each encounter with the language, he argues, leaves a trace in our minds. We record the forms of utterances, the concepts and interpretations associated with them, and the contexts in which they were heard or seen. Features of incoming language - a word, a phrase, a meaning, a voice quality, an interactional situation - resonate with items already stored. Similarities between stored items give rise to generalizations of varying degrees of certainty and precision, which in turn are able to sanction new and innovative expressions. John Taylor writes with conviction, clarity, and wit, illustrating every stage of his argument with arresting examples. His account makes a profound and original contribution to understanding the nature of language and the operations of the mind and brain. His book will appeal in equal measure to linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists.

Corpus, Discourse and Mental Health

Corpus, Discourse and Mental Health
Author: Daniel Hunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2020-05-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1350059188

Situated at the interface of corpus linguistics and health communication, Corpus, Discourse and Mental Health provides insights into the linguistic practices of members of three online support communities as they describe their experiences of living with and managing different mental health problems, including anorexia nervosa, depression and diabulimia. In examining contemporary health communication data, the book combines quantitative corpus linguistic methods with qualitative discourse analysis that draws upon recent theoretical insights from critical health sociology. Using this mixed-methods approach, the analysis identifies patterns and consistencies in the language used by people experiencing psychological distress and their role in realising varying representations of mental illness, diagnosis and treatment. Far from being neutral accounts of suffering and treating illness, corpus analysis illustrates that these interactions are suffused with moral and ideological tensions sufferers seek to collectively negotiate responsibility for the onset and treatment of recalcitrant mental health problems. Integrating corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis and health sociology, this book showcases the capacity of linguistic analysis for understanding mental health discourse as well as critically exploring the potential of corpus linguistics to offer an evidence-based approach to health communication research.

The Mental Lexicon

The Mental Lexicon
Author: Gonia Jarema
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2007-07-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0080548695

This volume reflects a consensus that the investigation of words in the mind offers a unique opportunity to understand both human language ability and general human cognition. It brings together key perspectives on the fundamental nature of the representation and processing of words in the mind. This thematic volume covers a wide range of views on the fundamental nature of representation and processing of words in the mind and a range of views on the investigative techniques that are most likely to reveal that nature. It provides an overview of issues and developments in the field. It uncovers the processes of word recognition. It develops new models of lexical processing.

Text Representation

Text Representation
Author: Ted Sanders
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2001-12-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027297673

This book brings together linguistics and psycholinguistics. Text representation is considered a cognitive entity: a mental construct that plays a crucial role in both text production and text understanding. The focus is on referential and relational coherence and the role of linguistic characteristics as processing instructions from a text linguistic and discourse psychology point of view. Consequently, this book presents various research methodologies: linguistic analysis, text analysis, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, argumentation analysis, and the experimental psycholinguistic study of text processing. The authors compare, test, and evaluate linguistic and processing theories of text representation. A state of the art volume in an emerging field of interest, located at the very heart of our communicative behavior: the study of text and text representation.

Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions

Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions
Author: Sebastian Hoffmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2007-04-11
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1134237278

What is a grammatical unit? How does grammatical structure evolve? How can we best investigate the mental representation of grammar? What is the connection between language use and language structure? This book aims to help answer such questions by presenting a detailed analysis of English complex prepositions (e.g. in spite of or with respect to) on the basis of large amounts of authentic language data dating from the Middle Ages until today.

Ardipithecus kadabba

Ardipithecus kadabba
Author: Yohannes Haile-Selassie
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 664
Release: 2023-12-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0520942507

The second volume in a series dedicated to fossil discoveries made in the Afar region of Ethiopia, this work contains the definitive description of the geological context and paleoenvironment of the early hominid Ardipithecus kadabba. This research by an international team describes Middle Awash late Miocene faunal assemblages recovered from sediments firmly dated to between 5.2 and 5.8 million years ago. Compared to other assemblages of similar age, the Middle Awash record is unparalleled in taxonomic diversity, composed of 2,760 specimens representing at least sixty five mammalian genera. This comprehensive evaluation of the vertebrates from the end of the Miocene in Africa provides detailed morphological and taxonomic descriptions of dozens of taxa, including species new to science. It also incorporates results from analyses of paleoenvironment, paleobiogeography, biochronology, and faunal turnover around the Pliocene-Miocene boundary, opening a new window on the evolution of mammals, African fauna, and its environments.

Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica

Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica
Author: Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1774
Release: 2016-01-29
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 131749802X

The Enciclopedia de Linguistica Hispánica provides comprehensive coverage of the major and subsidiary fields of Spanish linguistics. Entries are extensively cross-referenced and arranged alphabetically within three main sections: Part 1 covers linguistic disciplines, approaches and methodologies. Part 2 brings together the grammar of Spanish, including subsections on phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Part 3 brings together the historical, social and geographical factors in the evolution of Spanish. Drawing on the expertise of a wide range of contributors from across the Spanish-speaking world the Enciclopedia de Linguistica Hispánica is an indispensable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Spanish, and for anyone with an academic or professional interest in the Spanish language/Spanish linguistics.

Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics

Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics
Author: Hubert Cuyckens
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2009-06-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110219077

This collected volume presents radically new directions which are emerging in cognitive lexical semantics research. A number of papers re-ignite the polysemy vs. monosemy debate, and testify to the fact that polysemy is no longer simply taken for granted, but is currently a much more contested issue than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Other papers offer fresh perspectives on the prototype structure of lexical categories, while generally accepted notions about the radial network structure of categories are questioned in papers on the development of word meaning in child language acquisition and in diachrony. Additional topics include the interaction of lexical and constructional meaning, and the relationship between word meanings and the contexts in which the words are encountered. This book is of interest to semanticists and cognitive linguists, as well as to scholars working in the broader field of cognitive science.