Grammar Complexity

Author : G. Edward Barton
Publisher : Bradford Books
ISBN 13 : 9780262524056
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Computational Complexity and Natural Language written by G. Edward Barton and published by Bradford Books. This book was released on 1987 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A nontechnical introduction to complexity theory: its strengths, its weaknesses, and how it can be used to study grammars.

Author : Douglas Biber
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000481921
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Register-Functional Approach to Grammatical Complexity written by Douglas Biber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together the authors' previous research with new work on the Register-Functional (RF) approach to grammatical complexity, offering a unified theoretical account for its further study. The book traces the development of the RF approach from its foundations in two major research strands of linguistics: the study of sociolinguistic variation and the text-linguistic study of register variation. Building on this foundation, the authors demonstrate the RF framework at work across a series of corpus-based research studies focused specifically on grammatical complexity in English. The volume highlights early work exploring patterns of grammatical complexity in present-day spoken and written registers as well as subsequent studies which extend this research to historical patterns of register variation and the application of RF research to the study of writing development for L1 and L2 English university students. Taken together, along with the addition of introductory chapters connecting the different studies, the volume offers readers with a comprehensive resource to better understand the RF approach to grammatical complexity and its implications for future research. The volume will appeal to students and scholars with research interests in either descriptive linguistics or applied linguistics, especially those interested in grammatical complexity and empirical, corpus-based approaches.

Author : Francesca Di Garbo
Publisher : Language Science Press
ISBN 13 : 3961101787
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I written by Francesca Di Garbo and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity.

Author : Douglas Biber
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316462404
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammatical Complexity in Academic English written by Douglas Biber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grammatical Complexity in Academic English uses corpus-based analyses to challenge a number of dominant stereotypes and assumptions within linguistics. Biber and Gray tackle the nature of grammatical complexity, demonstrating that embedded phrasal structures are as important as embedded dependent clauses. The authors also overturn ingrained assumptions about linguistic change, showing that grammatical change occurs in writing as well as speech. This work establishes that academic writing is structurally compressed (rather than elaborated); that it is often not explicit in the expression of meaning; and that scientific academic writing has been the locus of some of the most important grammatical changes in English over the past 200 years (rather than being conservative and resistant to change). Supported throughout with textual evidence, this work is essential reading for discourse analysts, sociolinguists, and applied linguists, as well as descriptive linguists and historical linguists.

Author : W.J. Savitch
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9400934017
Total Pages : 462 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Formal Complexity of Natural Language written by W.J. Savitch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Chomsky laid the framework for a mathematically formal theory of syntax, two classes of formal models have held wide appeal. The finite state model offered simplicity. At the opposite extreme numerous very powerful models, most notable transformational grammar, offered generality. As soon as this mathematical framework was laid, devastating arguments were given by Chomsky and others indicating that the finite state model was woefully inadequate for the syntax of natural language. In response, the completely general transformational grammar model was advanced as a suitable vehicle for capturing the description of natural language syntax. While transformational grammar seems likely to be adequate to the task, many researchers have advanced the argument that it is "too adequate. " A now classic result of Peters and Ritchie shows that the model of transformational grammar given in Chomsky's Aspects [IJ is powerful indeed. So powerful as to allow it to describe any recursively enumerable set. In other words it can describe the syntax of any language that is describable by any algorithmic process whatsoever. This situation led many researchers to reasses the claim that natural languages are included in the class of transformational grammar languages. The conclu sion that many reached is that the claim is void of content, since, in their view, it says little more than that natural language syntax is doable algo rithmically and, in the framework of modern linguistics, psychology or neuroscience, that is axiomatic.

Author : Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199685304
Total Pages : 387 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Measuring Grammatical Complexity written by Frederick J. Newmeyer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the question of whether languages can differ in grammatical complexity and, if so, how relative complexity differences might be measured. Chapters approach the question from the point of view of formal grammatical theory, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics, and take phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics into account.

Author : Matti Miestamo
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9789027231048
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Complexity written by Matti Miestamo and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Peter Culicover
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191625930
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammar & Complexity written by Peter Culicover and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines ideas about the architecture of grammar and language acquisition, processing, and change to explain why languages show regular patterns when there is so much irregularity in their use and so much complexity when there is such regularity in linguistic phenomena. Peter Culicover argues that the structure of language can be understood and explained in terms of two kinds of complexity: firstly that of the correspondence between form and meaning; secondly in the real-time processes involved in the construction of meanings in linguistic expressions. Mainstream generative theory is based on inherent linguistic competence and on the regularities within and across languages, with the exceptional aspects of any language frequently put to one side. But a language's irregular and unique features offer, the author argues, fundamental insights into both the nature of language and the way it is produced and understood. Peter Culicover's new book offers a pertinent and original contribution to key current debates in linguistic theory. It will interest scholars and advanced students of linguists of all theoretical persuasions.

Author : Volchenkov Dimitri
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 981323251X
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammar Of Complexity: From Mathematics To A Sustainable World written by Volchenkov Dimitri and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2018-01-17 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is an introduction, for both graduate students and newcomers to the field of the modern theory of mesoscopic complex systems, time series, hypergraphs and graphs, scaled random walks, and modern information theory. As these are applied for the exploration and characterization of complex systems. Our self-consistent review provides the necessary basis for consistency. We discuss a number of applications such diverse as urban structures and musical compositions. Contents: Perplexity of ComplexityPreliminaries: Permutations, Partitions, Probabilities and InformationTheory of Extreme EventsStatistical Basis of Inequality and Discounting the Future and InequalityElements of Graph Theory. Adjacency, Walks, and EntropiesExploring Graph Structures by Random WalksWe Shape Our Buildings: Thereafter They Shape UsComplexity of Musical Harmony Readership: Graduate student in information theory, complex systems and mathematical modeling. Keywords: Complex Systems and Processes;Extreme Events;Discounting the Future and Inequality;Urban Environments;Complexity of Musical HarmonyReview: Key Features: The book provides the unique treatment of the modern theory of mesoscopic complex systems, time series, hypergraphs and graphs, scaled random walks, and modern information theory as applied for exploration and characterization of complex systemsThe book shows how the concepts of complexity theory is applicable to the problem fo survival, urban studies, income inequality, musical harmonyThe book might be used as recommended reading for a course

Author : Östen Dahl
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027295255
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity written by Östen Dahl and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-08-31 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.