Language As A Scientific Tool

Author : Miles MacLeod
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317327500
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language as a Scientific Tool written by Miles MacLeod and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language is the most essential medium of scientific activity. Many historians, sociologists and science studies scholars have investigated scientific language for this reason, but only few have examined those cases where language itself has become an object of scientific discussion. Over the centuries scientists have sought to control, refine and engineer language for various epistemological, communicative and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language have bubbled to the surface in scientific discourse. This opens a window into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural contexts and places, and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of national languages and the development of science within national settings, and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understudied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval Hebrew science.

Author : Miles MacLeod
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781315657257
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language as a Scientific Tool written by Miles MacLeod and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language is the most essential medium of scientific activity. Many historians, sociologists and science studies scholars have investigated scientific language for this reason, but only few have examined those cases where language itself has become an object of scientific discussion. Over the centuries scientists have sought to control, refine and engineer language for various epistemological, communicative and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language have bubbled to the surface in scientific discourse. This opens a window into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural contexts and places, and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of national languages and the development of science within national settings, and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understudied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval Hebrew science.

Author : Daniel L. Everett
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307907023
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language written by Daniel L. Everett and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain—as most linguists do—but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide. For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. For example, the Amazonian Pirahã put words together in ways that violate our long-held under-standing of how language works, and Pirahã grammar expresses complex ideas very differently than English grammar does. Drawing on the Wari’ language of Brazil, Everett explains that speakers of all languages, in constructing their stories, omit things that all members of the culture understand. In addition, Everett discusses how some cultures can get by without words for numbers or counting, without verbs for “to say” or “to give,” illustrating how the very nature of what’s important in a language is culturally determined. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.

Author : Daniel L. Everett
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 087140477X
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention written by Daniel L. Everett and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Language Began revolutionizes our understanding of the one tool that has allowed us to become the "lords of the planet." Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a “bombshell” linguist and “instant folk hero” (Tom Wolfe, Harper’s), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than seven thousand languages that exist today. Although fossil hunters and linguists have brought us closer to unearthing the true origins of language, Daniel Everett’s discoveries have upended the contemporary linguistic world, reverberating far beyond academic circles. While conducting field research in the Amazonian rainforest, Everett came across an age-old language nestled amongst a tribe of hunter-gatherers. Challenging long-standing principles in the field, Everett now builds on the theory that language was not intrinsic to our species. In order to truly understand its origins, a more interdisciplinary approach is needed—one that accounts as much for our propensity for culture as it does our biological makeup. Language began, Everett theorizes, with Homo Erectus, who catalyzed words through culturally invented symbols. Early humans, as their brains grew larger, incorporated gestures and voice intonations to communicate, all of which built on each other for 60,000 generations. Tracing crucial shifts and developments across the ages, Everett breaks down every component of speech, from harnessing control of more than a hundred respiratory muscles in the larynx and diaphragm, to mastering the use of the tongue. Moving on from biology to execution, Everett explores why elements such as grammar and storytelling are not nearly as critical to language as one might suspect. In the book’s final section, Cultural Evolution of Language, Everett takes the ever-debated “language gap” to task, delving into the chasm that separates “us” from “the animals.” He approaches the subject from various disciplines, including anthropology, neuroscience, and archaeology, to reveal that it was social complexity, as well as cultural, physiological, and neurological superiority, that allowed humans—with our clawless hands, breakable bones, and soft skin—to become the apex predator. How Language Began ultimately explains what we know, what we’d like to know, and what we likely never will know about how humans went from mere communication to language. Based on nearly forty years of fieldwork, Everett debunks long-held theories by some of history’s greatest thinkers, from Plato to Chomsky. The result is an invaluable study of what makes us human.

Author : N.J. Enfield
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262368773
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language vs. Reality written by N.J. Enfield and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind’s greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind’s greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J. Enfield notes, language is far better at persuasion than it is at objectively capturing the facts of experience. Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), why it can be dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands, and why it deserves our deepest respect. Enfield offers a lively exploration of the science underlying the bugs and features of language. He examines the tenuous relationship between language and reality; details the array of effects language has on our memory, attention, and reasoning; and describes how these varied effects power narratives and storytelling as well as political spin and conspiracy theories. Why should we care what language is good for? Enfield, who has spent twenty years at the cutting edge of language research, argues that understanding how language works is crucial to tackling our most pressing challenges, including human cognitive bias, media spin, the “post-truth” problem, persuasion, the role of words in our thinking, and much more.

Author : Vsevolod Kapatsinski
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262037866
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Changing Minds Changing Tools written by Vsevolod Kapatsinski and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-07-24 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book that uses domain-general learning theory to explain recurrent trajectories of language change. In this book, Vsevolod Kapatsinski argues that language acquisition—often approached as an isolated domain, subject to its own laws and mechanisms—is simply learning, subject to the same laws as learning in other domains and well described by associative models. Synthesizing research in domain-general learning theory as it relates to language acquisition, Kapatsinski argues that the way minds change as a result of experience can help explain how languages change over time and can predict the likely directions of language change—which in turn predicts what kinds of structures we find in the languages of the world. What we know about how we learn (the core question of learning theory) can help us understand why languages are the way they are (the core question of theoretical linguistics). Taking a dynamic, usage-based perspective, Kapatsinski focuses on diachronic universals, recurrent pathways of language change, rather than synchronic universals, properties that all languages share. Topics include associative approaches to learning and the neural implementation of the proposed mechanisms; selective attention; units of language; a comparison of associative and Bayesian approaches to learning; representation in the mind of visual and auditory experience; the production of new words and new forms of words; and automatization of repeated action sequences. This approach brings us closer to understanding why languages are the way they are, Kapatsinski contends, than approaches premised on innate knowledge of language universals and the language acquisition device.

Author : Maria C. Grant
Publisher : Corwin Press
ISBN 13 : 1483345661
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reading and Writing in Science written by Maria C. Grant and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2015-01-21 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engage your students in scientific thinking across disciplines! Did you know that scientists spend more than half of their time reading and writing? Students who are science literate can analyze, present, and defend data – both orally and in writing. The updated edition of this bestseller offers strategies to link the new science standards with literacy expectations, and specific ideas you can put to work right away. Features include: A discussion of how to use science to develop essential 21st century skills Instructional routines that help students become better writers Useful strategies for using complex scientific texts in the classroom Tools to monitor student progress through formative assessment Tips for high-stakes test preparation

Author : Dragan Djurić
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3658096659
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Strategy Tools as Symbolic Objects in Managerial Language Games written by Dragan Djurić and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dragan Djurić looks at strategy tools from a process-ontological worldview as proposed by the Process Organization Studies discourse. Building on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy he understands science and management as language games thereby developing a view of strategy tools as objects with both an ontological and a symbolic function. This perspective is contrasted with the traditional understanding of strategy tools as ‘technologies of rationality’ as well as with the practice-based view of strategy tools as ‘boundary objects’.

Author : Andujar, Alberto
Publisher : IGI Global
ISBN 13 : 1799810992
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Recent Tools for Computer- and Mobile-Assisted Foreign Language Learning written by Andujar, Alberto and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The use of technological tools to foster language development has led to advances in language methodologies and changed the approach towards language instruction. The tendency towards developing more autonomous learners has emphasized the need for technological tools that could contribute to this shift in foreign language learning. Computer-assisted language learning and mobile-assisted language learning have greatly collaborated to foster language instruction out of the classroom environment, offering possibilities for distance learning and expanding in-class time. Recent Tools for Computer- and Mobile-Assisted Foreign Language Learning is a scholarly research book that explores current strategies for foreign language learning through the use of technology and introduces new technological tools and evaluates existing ones that foster language development. Highlighting a wide array of topics such as gamification, mobile technologies, and virtual reality, this book is essential for language educators, educational software developers, IT consultants, K-20 institutions, principals, professionals, academicians, researchers, curriculum designers, and students.

Author : Wenceslao J. Gonzalez
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 303060537X
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language and Scientific Research written by Wenceslao J. Gonzalez and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the role of language in scientific research and develops the semantics of science from different angles. The philosophical investigation of the volume is divided into four parts, which covers both basic science and applied science: I) The Problem of Reference and Potentialities of the Language in Science; II) Language and Change in Scientific Research: Evolution and Historicity; III) Scientific Language in the Context of Truth and Fiction; and IV) Language in Mathematics and in Empirical Sciences. Language plays a key role in science: our access to the theoretical, practical or evaluative dimensions of scientific activity begins with the mastery of language, continues with a deepening in the use of language and reaches the level of contribution when it creates new terms or changes them in sense and reference. This reveals the compatibility between objectivity in semantic contents and historicity in the progress of science. This volume is a valuable enrichment to students, academics and other professionals interested in science in all its forms, who seek to deepen the role that language plays in its structure and dynamics.