Linguistic Meaning Meets Linguistic Form

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Duffley
Keyword(s):  
Full Range ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Fundamental Relation ◽  
Columbia School ◽  
Linguistic Sign ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
Radical Revision

This book steers a middle course between two opposing conceptions that currently dominate the field of semantics, the logical and cognitive approaches. It brings to light the inadequacies of both frameworks, and argues along with the Columbia School that linguistic semantics must be grounded on the linguistic sign itself and the meaning it conveys across the full range of its uses. The book offers 12 case studies demonstrating the explanatory power of a sign-based semantics, dealing with topics such as complementation with aspectual and causative verbs, control and raising, wh- words, full-verb inversion, and existential-there constructions. It calls for a radical revision of the semantics/pragmatics interface, proposing that the dividing-line be drawn between semiologically-signified notional content (i.e. what is linguistically encoded) and non-semiologically-signified notional content (i.e. what is not encoded but still communicated). This highlights a dimension of embodiment that concerns the basic design architecture of human language itself: the ineludable fact that the fundamental relation on which language is based is the association between a mind-engendered meaning and a bodily produced sign. It is argued that linguistic analysis often disregards this fact and treats meaning on the level of the sentence or the construction, rather than on that of the lower-level linguistic items where the linguistic sign is stored in a stable, permanent, and direct relation with its meaning outside of any particular context. Building linguistic analysis up from the ground level provides it with a more solid foundation and increases its explanatory power.

Concluding reflections on natural language and embodiment

2020 ◽  
pp. 194-200
Author(s):  
Patrick Duffley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Fundamental Relation ◽  
Basic Design ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Direct Relation ◽  
Linguistic Sign ◽  
Solid Foundation

This chapter highlights a dimension of embodiment that is often overlooked and that concerns the basic design architecture of human language itself: the ineludable fact that the fundamental relation on which language is based is the association between a mind-engendered meaning and a bodily-produced sign. It is argued that this oversight is often due to treating meaning on the level of the sentence or the construction, rather than of the lower-level linguistic items where the linguistic sign is stored in a stable, permanent, and direct relation with its meaning outside of any particular context. Building linguistic analysis up from the ground level provides it with a solid foundation and increases its explanatory power.

Reduction of Spanish Word-Final /s/ and /n/

1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Lipski
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Present Note ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Linear Analysis ◽  
Simple Analysis ◽  
Phonological Processes ◽  
Fundamental Nature ◽  
Spanish Word ◽  
Spanish Phonology

The non-linear analysis of Spanish phonology as proposed by Harris (1984) and others promises to augment the explanatory power of currently available phonological descriptions, and may offer significant insights into the description of phonological differences among dialects. However, the interaction between previously held notions of phonological processes and the new theoretical analysis has not yet been fully explored, and the claim that the latter apparatus must necessarily completely supplant the former is perhaps over ambitious. The present note will deal with competing analyses of two frequent processes in Spanish, velarization of underlying /n/ and aspiration of underlying /s/, both of which have been used in support of the latest theoretical proposals. I will attempt to demonstrate that the data used to formulate these proposals have been excessively idealized. The full range of complexity and variation which surrounds these and similar phenomena necessitates a more ramified analysis, and even an idealization which does not distort the fundamental nature of the two processes casts doubt on the simple analysis suggested as a replacement for orthodox generative and traditional structuralist analyses.

The Reasoned Action Model

2012 ◽  
Vol 640 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Jaccard
Keyword(s):  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Reasoned Action ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Reasoned Action Model ◽  
The Social ◽  
Action Model

The reasoned action model (RAM) of Fishbein and Ajzen has been highly influential in the social and health sciences. This article describes three areas for future research that should expand its explanatory power. One area of research focuses on an idiographic RAM that encourages researchers to pursue the estimation of RAM parameters on a per-individual level rather than through traditional nomothetic modeling. The second area encourages scientists to develop a split-second RAM, that is, a RAM that can provide perspectives on the split-second decisions people make in everyday life. Integration of the RAM with models of working (short-term) memory is stressed. The third area for research encourages scientists to develop a multioption RAM that incorporates and is responsive to the choices that people make when confronted with multiple alternatives. This perspective stresses the need to apply the RAM to the full range of behavioral options that are available to people as they contemplate performing one behavior versus another. Perspectives for theoretical advancement in each area are developed.

scholarly journals Sensitivity of Precipitation Phase over the Swiss Alps to Different Meteorological Variables

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 685-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Froidurot ◽  
I. Zin ◽  
B. Hingray ◽  
A. Gautheron
Keyword(s):  
Relative Humidity ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Meteorological Data ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Swiss Alps ◽  
Meteorological Variables ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Precipitation Phase

Abstract In most meteorological or hydrological models, the distinction between snow and rain is based only on a given air temperature. However, other factors such as air moisture can be used to better distinguish between the two phases. In this study, a number of models using different combinations of meteorological variables are tested to determine their pertinence for the discrimination of precipitation phases. Spatial robustness is also evaluated. Thirty years (1981–2010) of Swiss meteorological data are used, consisting of radio soundings from Payerne as well as present weather observations and surface measurements (mean hourly surface air temperature, mean hourly relative humidity, and hourly precipitation) from 14 stations, including Payerne. It appeared that, unlike surface variables, variables derived from the atmospheric profiles (e.g., the vertical temperature gradient) hardly improve the discrimination of precipitation phase at ground level. Among all tested variables, surface air temperature and relative humidity show the greatest explanatory power. The statistical model using these two variables and calibrated for the case study region provides good spatial robustness over the region. Its parameters appear to confirm those defined in the model presented by Koistinen and Saltikoff.

scholarly journals John Doris' Excellence Adventure

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Carrie Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Experimental Social Psychology ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Virtue Ethicist ◽  
Positive Account ◽  
Radical Revision

Abstract: In his book Lack of Character (2002 Cambridge University Press) John Doris argues that both virtue ethics and common sense or folk psychology are committed to the claim that the attribution of character to persons is predictive, explanatory, and determinative of behaviour. Doris contends however that this claim is empirically false. Citing the results of experiments in the situationist research tradition in experimental social psychology, Doris argues that it is a person’s situation, and not his or her character, that determines how a person will behave in a given situation. Doris concludes that virtue ethics in particular is in need of radical revision, since the attribution of character to persons is thereby shown to be otiose at best, and empirically misleading at worst. In this essay I defend traditional virtue ethics against Doris’ situationist critique. My discussion falls into four parts. In Section 1 I set out the key claims that Doris makes about the empirical inadequacy of traditional virtue ethics. In Section 2 I describe three of the most important experiments which Doris adduces in his argument for situationism. In Section 3 I offer alternative interpretations of all three experiments, largely, but not exclusively, from an Aristotelian perspective. In Section 4 I respond to Doris’ positive account of moral character, viz., his ‘fragmentation hypothesis’ and his theory of ‘local traits’. Here I argue that Doris’ positive account is lacking in explanatory power; I suggest as well that his positive account is poorly motivated, since he has largely misunderstood the traditional concept of a moral disposition. In particular, it is crucial to Doris’ critique of virtue ethics that virtues and traits of character are cross-situationally consistent (or ‘robust’); since according to Doris, it will only be attributions of character so conceived that are shown to be empirically inadequate by the situationist experiments he discusses. Doris’ notion of a robust disposition is however alien to Aristotle and the virtue ethicists who are inspired by him. I demonstrate that the virtue ethicist conceives of a virtue as a rational disposition. A virtue is a disposition to act and feel in an appropriate way as a result of and in response to rational considerations about the good in particular circumstances. The acquisition of virtue is a difficult moral achievement because it involves the complex and interdependent development of both the intellectual and emotional capacities of a human being. It is precisely because the virtues are not robust traits in Doris’ sense that the deliverances of practical reason, even when it is operating in its fullest capacity, will issue in decisions in particular circumstances that cannot be captured by the notion of ‘cross-situational consistency’. I conclude that insofar as that is the case Doris has managed to make very little dialectical contact with the concept of virtue as that has been conceived in the virtue ethics tradition.

Re-Thinking Bloomfield’s Concepts of Meaning: Do Meaning Really as a Weak Point in Language Study?

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 84-89
Author(s):  
Cendy Lauren ◽  
Anggi Resti Rahmadani ◽  
Farni Wulandari
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Weak Point ◽  
Data Presentation ◽  
Language Study ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive

This paper aims to describe the concepts of meaning in Bloomfield’s Theory. The methodology used to gain data in this paper is a qualitative descriptive using documentation method. Sources of data consists of words, sentences, and discourses found in the book Language by Bloomfield published by Henry Holt in New York in 1933. This research collects its data in a descriptive manner by reducing data, presentation data then drawing conclusions. The results of the analysis of this study indicate that  Bloomfield underlines that meaning as a weak point in language study and believed that it might well be all expressed in behaviourist terms. Bloomfield also stressed the context of the situation was a very important level of linguistic analysis aside syntax, morphology, phonology, and phonetics, all of which support to linguistic meaning. This present study also found that Bloomfield considered words to be ambiguous notions both in everyday speech and in linguistics. 

Investigations in clinical phonetics and linguistics. Fay Windsor, M. Louise Kelly, and Nigel Hewitt (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002.

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-165
Author(s):  
Chloe Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer Disease ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Elderly Subject ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
University College ◽  
Language Data ◽  
Bilingual Language Development ◽  
And Linguistics

This volume consists of 38 papers presented at the summer 2000 meeting of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association, hosted by Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh. The scope of the collection is ambitious in many respects. All levels of linguistic analysis are covered, from pragmatics through to acoustics, although approximately two thirds of the papers deal with phonology and phonetics. The full range of ages is represented, from a paper by John Locke on the functions of infant babbling through to Jacqueline Guendozi and Nicole Muller's paper on repair strategies in the conversation of an elderly subject with Alzheimer disease. The majority of the papers consider developmental and acquired disorders, although a few consider normal and bilingual language development. Although English is the most frequently studied language, data from Arabic, Greek, Korean, Portugese, Putonghua, Swedish, and several other languages are also featured. The editors are justly proud of the international feel to the research, with contributors working on five continents.

scholarly journals The reflexion coefficients of ionospheric regions.

1938 ◽  
Vol 164 (919) ◽  
pp. 467-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Victor Appleton ◽  
J. H. Piddington
Keyword(s):  
Radio Wave ◽  
Close Agreement ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Lower Atmosphere ◽  
Radio Waves ◽  
Above Ground Level ◽  
The World ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Radical Revision

In a recent communication to the Society, Watson Watt, Wilkins and Bowen (1937) have described the results of an ionospheric investigation conducted by means of radio wave reflexion which they have interpreted as demonstrating the existence of four or more highly reflecting strata in the lower atmosphere, about 10 km. above ground level. These results and their interpretation are naturally of great interest to those whose field of investigation has been the ionospheric regions at greater heights; for, as the authors of (I) state, their own findings “must modify the detailed discussion of ionospheric soundings effected with sounding waves which have had to traverse these highly reflecting strata”. Moreover, if the high reflexion coefficients estimated for these low-lying strata are correct, even as regards order of magnitude only, it is immediately obvious that our ideas concerning the travel of wireless waves to great distances require radical revision, for, since 1926, it has been customary to regard such communication as generally being effected either by way of Region E in the case of long waves, or by way of Region F in the case of the shorter waves. It can, further, be asserted that current explanations of such phenomena are in such close agreement with the results of what is now known of the structure of the ionosphere at levels of 90 km. and above, that any evidence not in harmony with these accepted relations must be accorded the closest scrutiny. The experimental observations of Colwell and Friend (1936) and of the authors of (I) (1937) concerning the return of radio waves from low levels in the atmosphere are of the greatest scientific importance and, immediately they were announced, investigations were begun here in Cambridge to see if we could confirm them. It was desired especially to ascertain in this connexion how far the existence of such lowlying reflecting strata influenced the interpretation of the vast amount of observational work already carried out in various parts of the world on radio reflexion at higher levels.

Vadose Zone Hydrology

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc B. Parlange ◽  
Jan W. Hopmans
Keyword(s):  
Vadose Zone ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Soil Science ◽  
Biological Interactions ◽  
Upper Limits ◽  
Art Research ◽  
Landscape Scales ◽  
Vadose Zone Hydrology

The vadose zone is the region between ground level and the upper limits of soil fully saturated with water. Hydrology in the zone is complex: nonlinear physical, chemical, and biological interactions all affect the transfer of heat, mass, and momentum between the atmosphere and the water table. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to vadose zone hydrology, bringing together insights from soil science, hydrology, biology, chemistry, physics, and instrumentation design. The chapters present state-of-the-art research, focusing on new frontiers in theory, experiment, and management of soils. The collection addresses the full range of processes, from the pore-scale to field and landscape scales.

scholarly journals Beyond social learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1828) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manvir Singh ◽  
Alberto Acerbi ◽  
Christine A. Caldwell ◽  
Étienne Danchin ◽  
Guillaume Isabel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Cognitive Behavioural ◽  
The Social ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Cultural evolution requires the social transmission of information. For this reason, scholars have emphasized social learning when explaining how and why culture evolves. Yet cultural evolution results from many mechanisms operating in concert. Here, we argue that the emphasis on social learning has distracted scholars from appreciating both the full range of mechanisms contributing to cultural evolution and how interactions among those mechanisms and other factors affect the output of cultural evolution. We examine understudied mechanisms and other factors and call for a more inclusive programme of investigation that probes multiple levels of the organization, spanning the neural, cognitive-behavioural and populational levels. To guide our discussion, we focus on factors involved in three core topics of cultural evolution: the emergence of culture, the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution and the design of cultural traits. Studying mechanisms across levels can add explanatory power while revealing gaps and misconceptions in our knowledge. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution’.

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