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This book puts together contributions of linguists and psycholinguists whose main interest here is the representation of Semitic words in the mental lexicon of Semitic language speakers. The central topic of the book confronts two views about the morphology of Semitic words. The point of the argument is: Should we see Semitic words' morphology as root-based or word-based? The proponents of the root-based approach, present empirical evidence demonstrating that Semitic language speakers are sensitive to the root and the template as the two basic elements (bound morphemes) of Semitic words. Those supporting the word-based approach, present arguments to the effect that Semitic word formation is not based on the merging of roots and templates, but that Semitic words are comprised of word stems and affixes like we find in Indo-European languages. The variety of evidence and arguments for each claim should force the interested readers to reconsider their views on Semitic morphology.
When humans learn languages, are they also learning how to create shared meaning? In The Usage-based Study of Language Learning and Multilingualism, a cadre of international experts say yes and offer cutting-edge research in usage-based linguistics to explore how language acquisition, in particular multilingual language acquisition, works. Each chapter presents an original study that supports the view that language learning is initiated through local and meaningful communication with others. Over an accumulated history of such usage, people gradually create more abstract, interactive schematic representations, or a mental grammar. This process of acquiring language is the same for infants and adults and across varied contexts, such as the family, the classroom, the laboratory, a hospital, or a public encounter. Employing diverse methodologies to study this process, the contributors here work with target languages, including Cantonese, English, French, French Sign Language, German, Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Spanish, and Swedish, and offer a much-needed exploration of this growing area of linguistic research.
The goal of the volume is to shed fresh light on Modern Hebrew from perspectives aimed at readers interested in the domains of general linguistics, typology, and Semitic studies. Starting with chapters that provide background information on the evolution and sociolinguistic setting of the language, the bulk of the book is devoted to usage-based studies of the morphology, lexicon, and syntax of current Hebrew. Based primarily on original analyses of authentic spoken and online materials, these studies reflect varied theoretical frames-of-reference that are largely model-neutral in approach. To this end, the book presents a functionally motivated, dynamic approach to actual usage, rather than providing strictly structuralist or formal characterizations of particular linguistic systems. Such a perspective is particularly important in the case of a language undergoing accelerated processes of change, in which the gap between prescriptive dictates of the Hebrew Language Establishment and the actual usage of educated, literate but non-expert speaker-writers of current Hebrew is constantly on the rise.
This volume brings together for the first time research by linguists working in cross-linguistic discourse analysis and by second language researchers working in the contrastive rhetoric tradition. The collection of articles by prominent authors and younger scholars encompasses a variety of research approaches and treats numerous naturally-occurring spoken and written genres, including conversations, narratives, academic expository writing, journalism, advertising, and professional promotional texts. Languages examined include English, Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Urdu, Dutch, Turkish and Serbo-Croatian. Taken individually and collectively, the articles in this collection draw important conclusions concerning the roles of cognition, multilingualism, communities of practice, and linguistic typology in shaping discourse within and across cultures.
Word storage and processing define a multi-factorial domain of scientific inquiry whose thorough investigation goes well beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplinary taxonomies, to require synergic integration of a wide range of methods, techniques and empirical and experimental findings. The present book intends to approach a few central issues concerning the organization, structure and functioning of the Mental Lexicon, by asking domain experts to look at common, central topics from complementary standpoints, and discuss the advantages of developing converging perspectives. The book will explore the connections between computational and algorithmic models of the mental lexicon, word f...
Modern Hebrew is a highly synthetic Semitic language—its lexicon is rich in morphemes. This volume supplies the first in-depth psycholinguistic analysis of the interaction between morphological knowledge and spelling in Hebrew. It also examines how far this model can be applied to other languages. Anchored to a connectionist, cognitive, cross-linguistic and typological framework, the study accords with today’s perception of spelling as being much more than a mere technical skill. Contemporary psycholinguistic literature views spelling as a window on what people know about words and their structure. The strong correlation between orthographies and morphological units makes linking consistent grammatical and lexical representation and spelling units in speaker-writers a key research goal. Hebrew’s wealth of morphological structures, reflected in its written form, promotes morphological perception and strategies in those who speak and write it, adding vitality and relevance to this work.
"What is at work in the mind of a five-year-old explaining the game of tag to a new friend? What is going on in the head of a thirty-five-year-old parent showing a first-grader how to button a coat? And what exactly is happening in the brain of a sixty-five-year-old professor discussing statistics with a room full of graduate students? While research about the nature and science of learning abounds, shockingly few insights into how and why humans teach have emerged--until now. Countering the dated yet widely held presumption that teaching is simply the transfer of knowledge from one person to another, The Teaching Brain weaves together scientific research and real-life examples to show that ...