Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable write by Geoffrey Sampson. This book was released on 2009-02-26. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book presents a challenge to the widely-held assumption that human languages are both similar and constant in their degree of complexity. For a hundred years or more the universal equality of languages has been a tenet of faith among most anthropologists and linguists. It has been frequently advanced as a corrective to the idea that some languages are at a later stage of evolution than others. It also appears to be an inevitable outcome of one of the central axioms of generative linguistic theory: that the mental architecture of language is fixed and is thus identical in all languages and that whereas genes evolve languages do not. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable reopens the debate. Geoffrey Sampson's introductory chapter re-examines and clarifies the notion and theoretical importance of complexity in language, linguistics, cognitive science, and evolution. Eighteen distinguished scholars from all over the world then look at evidence gleaned from their own research in order to reconsider whether languages do or do not exhibit the same degrees and kinds of complexity. They examine data from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and social complexity and relate their findings to the causes and processes of language change. Their arguments are frequently controversial and provocative; their conclusions add up to an important challenge to conventional ideas about the nature of language. The authors write readably and accessibly with no recourse to unnecessary jargon. This fascinating book will appeal to all those interested in the interrelations between human nature, culture, and language.
Language Complexity
Language Complexity - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Language Complexity write by Matti Miestamo. This book was released on 2008. Language Complexity available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Language complexity has recently attracted considerable attention from linguists of many different persuasions. This volume a thematic selection of papers from the conference Approaches to Complexity in Language, held in Helsinki, August 2005 is the first collection of articles devoted to the topic. The sixteen chapters of the volume approach the notion of language complexity from a variety of perspectives. The papers are divided into three thematic sections that reflect the central themes of the book: Typology and theory, Contact and change, Creoles and pidgins. The book is mainly intended for typologists, historical linguists, contact linguists and creolists, as well as all linguists interested in language complexity in general. As the first collective volume on a very topical theme, the book is expected to be of lasting interest to the linguistic community.
Computational Complexity and Natural Language
Computational Complexity and Natural Language - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Computational Complexity and Natural Language write by G. Edward Barton. This book was released on 1987. Computational Complexity and Natural Language available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A nontechnical introduction to complexity theory: its strengths, its weaknesses, and how it can be used to study grammars.
Linguistic Complexity
Linguistic Complexity - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Linguistic Complexity write by Bernd Kortmann. This book was released on 2012-05-29. Linguistic Complexity available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Linguistic complexity is one of the currently most hotly debated notions in linguistics. The essays in this volume reflect the intricacies of thinking about the complexity of languages and language varieties (here: of English) in three major contact-related fields of (and schools in) linguistics: creolistics, indigenization and nativization studies (i.e. in the realm of English linguistics, the “World Englishes” community), and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research: How can we adequately assess linguistic complexity? Should we be interested in absolute complexity or rather relative complexity? What is the extent to which language contact and/or (adult) language learning might lead to morphosyntactic simplification? The authors in this volume are all leading linguists in different areas of specialization, and they were asked to elaborate on those facets of linguistic complexity which are most relevant in their area of specialization, and/or which strike them as being most intriguing. The result is a collection of papers that is unique in bringing together leading representatives of three often disjunct fields of linguistic scholarship in which linguistic complexity is seen as a dynamic and inherently variable parameter.
The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity
The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity write by Östen Dahl. This book was released on 2004-08-31. The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book studies linguistic complexity and the processes by which it arises and is maintained, focusing not so much on what one can say in a language as how it is said. Complexity is not seen as synonymous with “difficulty” but as an objective property of a system – a measure of the amount of information needed to describe or reconstruct it. Grammatical complexity is the result of historical processes often subsumed under the rubric of grammaticalization and involves what can be called mature linguistic phenomena, that is, features that take time to develop. The nature and characteristics of such processes are discussed in detail, as well as the external and internal factors that favor or disfavor stability and change in language.
