The Grammatical Nature of Minimal Structures


Book Description

An important development in linguistic models is the shift from construction-oriented rules to elementary computations that generate complex grammatical expressions. In this monograph, the author presents a systematic linguistic examination of an Italian aphasic speaker focusing on locality conditions as configurational restrictions on syntactic computations and on functional elements as fundamental triggers for computational processes. The explanatory framework which has been adopted considers the grammar to be an integral part of language processing; it is a derivational model compatible with well-known parsing strategies such as the minimal link condition and the minimal chain principle. This approach to aphasia supports the hypothesis that linguistic deficit is an impoverishment of procedural capacities that manifests itself in reduced syntactic structures. The book is recommended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics, as well as medical researchers and speech therapists interested in the same fields. It can be adopted as principal text for the specific domain (syntax and aphasia).




Syntactic Structures


Book Description

No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".




Natural Language Generation


Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Natural Language Generation, INLG 2004, held in Brockenhurst, UK in July 2004. The 18 revised full papers presented together with an invited keynote paper and 4 student papers reporting ongoing PhD research work were carefully reviewed and selected from 46 submissions. All current aspects of the generation of natural language are addressed, including psychological modeling of human language production as well as computational approaches to the automatic generation of language.




Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences


Book Description

Language, apart from its cultural and social dimension, has a scientific side that is connected not only to the study of 'grammar' in a more or less traditional sense, but also to disciplines like mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. This book explores developments in linguistic theory, looking in particular at the theory of generative grammar from the perspective of the natural sciences. It highlights the complex and dynamic nature of language, suggesting that a comprehensive and full understanding of such a species-specific property will only be achieved through interdisciplinary work.







Defining Language


Book Description

Definition is a basic activity of language, of particular importance to linguists because of its use of language to describe itself. Beyond this inherent significance as a crucial element of language study, definitions also provide a rich potential source of the information needed for Natural Language Processing systems. This book describes an investigation of the subset of general language used in definition sentences and the development of a taxonomy of definition types, a grammar of definition sentences and parsing software which can extract their functional components. The work is based on definition sentences used in one of the dictionaries from the Cobuild range, and the book includes a brief history of the development of monolingual English dictionaries, an assessment of the concepts of sublanguages and local grammars and a full exploration of the results of the analysis and of the present and future applications of the taxonomy, grammar and parser.




Language, Cognition, and Human Nature


Book Description

Collects for the first time Steven Pinker's most influential scholarly work on language and cognition. Pinker is a highly eminent cognitive scientist, and these essays emphasize the importance of language and its connections to cognition, social relationships, child development, human evolution, and theories of human nature.




Minimalist Syntax


Book Description

Publisher Description




A Natural Language and Graphics Interface


Book Description

This book presents important results from the ESPRIT Project 393 "Construction and Interrogation of Knowledge Bases Using Natural Language Text and Graphics" (ACORD). The project involved more than fifty people overfive years, and included industrial and academic partners from three countries. The main result of the project is a highly sophisticated human-machine interface allowing the construction and interrogation of a common knowledge base in English, French, and German, using both natural language and graphics. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the project. Chapters 2-4 develop specific issues concerning thegrammar models used (functional grammars and unification categorial grammars). Chapter 5 discusses anaphora resolution and Chapter 6 text generation. Chapter 7 explains the integration of text and graphics, and Chapter 8 discusses the knowledge base module. The contributions are theoretically oriented and strongly concerned with generalization and the underlying background of potential further developments.




The Limits of Syntax


Book Description

Contains a collection of essays which explore the ways in which greater incorporation of nonsyntactic explanations into linguistic research may deepen the understanding of problematic linguistic phenomena and, at the same time, strengthen syntactic research. It also addresses the status of syntactic constraints.