ISI Library

Annotation: This book was initiated by a graduate course of Elin Sütiste about semiotics of Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), given in the Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu. The contributions include articles by the doctoral students as well as co-lectures, visiting scholars and colleagues. These seminars affirmed that Jakobson was truly an ambitious, forward-thinking scholar who exerted himself to establish semiotics as a discipline. Though Jakobson identified himself as a philologist, he played a pivotal role in the development and institutionalization of semiotics. Jakobson’s ability to grasp the potential of new ideas and to inspire others was remarkable. Juri Lotman has commented that “Wherever his fate of a mid-20th-century man took him, everywhere Jakobson attracted a group of scientists that soon grew into a scientific centre of global importance”.

Identifier: 9789949036301

Status: Available

Annotation: this book explores why language operates the way it does, why it is acquired the way it is, how it evolved in the first place, and why it is that some phenomena in language are universal while others are not.

Identifier: 9783034322508

Status: Available

Other title information: Towards a Solipsistic Paradigm of Semiotics

Notes: One of the copies of this book was given to the library by Ludmila Lackova

Annotation: This publication traces the human capacity for sign use from its linguistic and cultural context. Such scholarship suggests the foundation of a discursive paradigm for semiotics stuck in mundane phenomenology, associated inter alia with the contributions of Leo Zawadovski and Ernst Cassirer drawing their inspiration from Karl Buhler.

Identifier: 9788323230823

Status: Available

Other title information: Analogies biologiques et structures mathématiques pour un génotexte

Annotation: A partir des verbes opérateurs d’un texte, jusqu’à leur enchaînement complet et original en une triple chaîne prédicative, l’ouvrage construit des scénarios de schèmes dans le cadre théorique de la Grammaire Applicative et Cognitive. Il propose une analyse de comparaisons existantes entre le génome et l’alphabet ou le texte, mettant en exergue la nécessité de niveaux d’analyse. A travers une série d’analogies, et une réflexion de ce fait interdisciplinaire, ces structures du langage sont mises en relation avec des structures mathématiques et biologiques : l’ADN, les protéines, la formation de l’embryon, selon des niveaux de comparaison. Construit par ses opérateurs qui mettent en œuvre un concept, le texte se déploie à partir de repères topologiques internes, tel le système nerveux puis le corps à la suite des cellules neurales. Une topologie textuelle devient appropriée pour décrire ce processus. From the operator verbs of a text, to their complete and original chaining in a triple predicative chain, the work constructs scenarios of schemes in the theoretical framework of Applicative and Cognitive Grammar. It proposes an analysis of existing comparisons between the genome and the alphabet or the text, highlighting the need for levels of analysis. Through a series of analogies, and a reflection of this interdisciplinary fact, these structures of language are related to mathematical and biological structures: DNA, proteins, the formation of the embryo, according to levels of comparison. Constructed by its operators who implement a concept, the text unfolds from internal topological markers, such as the nervous system then the body following the neural cells. A textual topology becomes appropriate to describe this process. (translated with Google Translate)

Identifier: 9783034320979

Status: Available

Other title information: Arabic-English-Arabic

Annotation: This book is an introduction to semantics for students and researchers who are new to the field, especially those interested in Arabic-English translation and Arabic-English contrastive studies.

Identifier: 9781906165581

Status: Available

Other title information: The Pre-Chomskyan Era

Annotation: How do we manage to speak and understand language? How do children acquire these skills and how does the brain support them? These psycholinguistic issues have been studied for more than two centuries. Though many Psycholinguists tend to consider their history as beginning with the Chomskyan "cognitive revolution" of the late 1950s/1960s, the history of empirical psycholinguistics actually goes back to the end of the 18th century. This is the first book to comprehensively treat this "pre-Chomskyan" history. It tells the fascinating history of the doctors, pedagogues, linguists and psychologists who created this discipline, looking at how they made their important discoveries about the language regions in the brain, about the high-speed accessing of words in speaking and listening, on the child's invention of syntax, on the disruption of language in aphasic patients and so much more. The book is both a history of ideas as well of the men and women whose intelligence, brilliant insights, fads, fallacies, cooperations, and rivalries created this discipline. Psycholinguistics has four historical roots, which, by the end of the 19th century, had merged. By then, the discipline, usually called the psychology of language, was established. The first root was comparative linguistics, which raised the issue of the psychological origins of language. The second root was the study of language in the brain, with Franz Gall as the pioneer and the Broca and Wernicke discoveries as major landmarks. The third root was the diary approach to child development, which emerged from Rousseau's Émile. The fourth root was the experimental laboratory approach to speech and language processing, which originated from Franciscus Donders' mental chronometry. Wilhelm Wundt unified these four approaches in his monumental Die Sprache of 1900. These four perspectives of psycholinguistics continued into the 20th century but in quite divergent frameworks. There was German consciousness and thought psychology, Swiss/French and Prague/Viennese structuralism, Russian and American behaviorism, and almost aggressive holism in aphasiology. As well as reviewing all these perspectives, the book looks at the deep disruption of the field during the Third Reich and its optimistic, multidisciplinary re-emergence during the 1950s with the mathematical theory of communication as a major impetus. A tour de force from one of the seminal figures in the field, this book will be essential reading for all linguists, psycholinguists, neuroscientists, and psychologists with an interest in language.

Identifier: 9780199653669

Status: Available

Other title information: René Thom’s Semiotic Heritage

Annotation: The central concern of this volume is semiogenesis, i.e. the evolution and differentiation of meaningful («pregnant») forms in the field of symbolic systems – from bio-communication to language and cultural forms like music, art, architecture or urban forms. The basic questions are: How are meanings created and further differentiated? Where do they come from? What kind of forces drive their unfolding? How can complex cultural forms be understood based on simple morphodynamic principles? Applications concern the perception of forms by animals and humans, the categorization of forms e.g. in a lexicon, and predication or other complex symbolic behaviors which show up in grammar or in cultural artifacts like the unfolding of urban centers.

Identifier: 9783034304672

Status: Available

Annotation: Understanding Morphology offers students an introduction to the study of word structure that starts at the very beginning. Assuming no knowledge of the field of morphology, the book presents a broad range of morphological phenomena from a variety of languages.

Identifier: 9780340950012

Status: Available

Other title information: indoeuropiečiu̜ ir lietuviu̜ kalbu̜ giminystė

Annotation: This book discovers the genesis of Lithuanian language and its position in the history of Indo-European language development.

Identifier: 9789986433484

Status: Available

Annotation: Lithuanian grammar in Italian

Identifier: 9789955699934

Status: Available

Other title information: Language in the Light of Evolution

Annotation: Hurford integrates findings from ethology and neuroscience with concepts from philosophy and linguistics to make an explicit and convincing case that animals have rich concepts, and thus that meaning predated language

Identifier: 9780199207855

Status: Available

Annotation: Bergson discusses the questions of philosophic truth in a way that allows an interpretation in terms of contemporary semiotics and hermeneutics. In his famous "Philosophical intuition" he defines this kind of truth as "something simple, infinitely simple, so extraordinarily simple that the philosopher has never succeded in saying it". This dialectic between intuition and its 'saying' is examined as the hermeneutics of understanding and interpretation. At the same time, this study attempts to open new insights in Bergson's philosophy, and especially in his notion of Intellectual Effort. Kristian Bankov, in his essay, considers this concept not only central to Bergson's philosophy, but also a key to the sign-nature of our whole being and existence in the world.

Identifier: 9519865403

Status: Available

Annotation: Bickerton argues that each of the properties distinguishing human intelligence and consciousness from that of other animals can be shown to derive straightforwardly from properties of language. In essence, language arose as a representational system, not a means of communication or a skill, and not a product of culture but an evolutionary adaptation.

Identifier: 1857285417

Status: Available

Annotation: Systemic linguistics is an approach which views language as a strategic, meaning making resource. This text, an introduction to this semiotic approach, focuses on the analysis of authentic, everyday texts, and asks both how people use language to make meanings, and how language itself is organised to enable those meanings to be made.

Identifier: 185567209X

Status: Available

Other title information: language as praxis in Lacan and Kristeva

Notes: MA thesis

Annotation: -

Status: Available

Other title information: Abstracts and materials from the first international interdisciplinary symposium on language and prehistory Ann Arbor, 8-12 November, 1988

Annotation: Abstracts and materials from the first international interdisciplinary symposium on language and prehistory Ann Arbor, 8-12 November, 1988

Identifier: 3883397083

Status: Available

Notes: series edited by Harald Clahsen and William Rutherford

Annotation: This state-of-the-art volume presents an outstanding collection of 22 studies on current issues facing research in second-language acquisition (SLA). The editors sought contributions for this volume from seasoned veterans of SLA like Lydia White and Susan Gass, from well-known researchers in linguistics and/or first-language acquisition like Haj Ross and Harald Clahsen, and from relative newcomers to the field like India Plough and Jean-Marc Dewaele. The topics covered range from the role of universals at various levels of second-language (L2) knowledge.

Identifier: 9027224668

Status: Available

Other title information: Materials from the First International Interdisciplinary Symposium of Language and Prehistory, Ann Arbor, 8.-12. November 1988

Annotation: This fourth collection of the materials of the 1988 symposium includes several pioneering papers on Sino-Caucasian (Dene-Caucasian) languages as well as a list of some 20000 North Caucasian roots which were reconstructed about a decade aho by S. Starosin and S. Nikolaev: Nikolaev wrote it by hand and senti it too us in 1981; it was used by J. C. Catford in his class on Caucasian languages: Starostin made some corrections to the list during his visit to Ann Arbor in March, 1990.

Identifier: 3883398950

Status: Available

Other title information: social and cultural considerations in communicative language teaching

Notes: Series editors Thomas A. Sebeok and Albert Valdman

Annotation: The book explores the relationship between context and com­petence from a theoretical and practical perspective. Its audience is applied linguists in general and language teaching practitioners.

Identifier: 0306434695

Status: Available

Annotation: Since the spectrum of possibilities in linguistic theory construction is much broader and more variegated than students of linguistics have perhaps been led to believe, the Current Issues in Linguistic theory series has been established in order to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of linguistic opinions of scholars who do not necessarily accept the prevailing mode of thought in linguistic science

Identifier: 9027235562

Status: Available

Other title information: its structure and use

Annotation: A textbook covering all of the core concepts of linguistics, icluding phonetics, morphology, syntax and semantics, as well as pragmatics and other fields covering communication and language in use. The book comes with examples covering different languages, and many excercises and resources for further self-study.

Identifier: 0155078275

Status: Available

Annotation: Le cours professé par Ferdinand de Saussure et publié par ses éleves s'est révélé se fécond qu'il constitue aujourd'hui encore la base des études linguistiques modernes, pour lesquelles il a eu une importance incalculable. Il a eu en particulier le mérite de définir pour la permiere fois, et de facon magistrale, un certain nombre de concepts-clés: la distinction entre langue et parole, la notion de langue comme systeme de signes, etc.

Identifier: 2228500704

Status: Available

Annotation: An introductory textbook for sociolinguistics

Identifier: 0521296684

Status: Available

Other title information: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism

Annotation: Fredric Jameson’s survey of Structuralism and Russian Formalism is, at the same time, a critique of their basic methodology. He lays bare the presuppositions of the two movements, clarifying the relationship between the synchronic methods of Saussurean linguistics and the realities of time and history.

Identifier: 9780691013169

Status: Available