Books on the topic 'Semantic map model'

This chapter reviews results from recent experimental studies on the acquisition of logical connectives. Developmental psychologists have long been interested in the development of logic in children, and recent research in this field has made great advancement by incorporating insights from theoretical linguistics. There are two important theoretical grounds that were crucial to such advancement. One is dissociation between pragmatic implicature and lexical semantics. The other is a model of semantic interaction between a logical connective and another logical word in the same sentence. Experimental results from recent studies that incorporated these insights strongly suggest that preschool children have sophisticated semantic knowledge of logical connectives, even though their behavior may sometimes deviate from adults’ behavior.

This article deals with the semantic analysis of the notion of modality, surveying the most important traditional views in linguistics. After pointing out the problems encountered in the literature in trying to define the category, it first discusses the in the literature most common basic types of modality, namely, dynamic modality, deontic modality, and epistemic modality, as well as the less common basic category of boulomaic modality. It then goes on to survey a variety of alternative views on how the semantic domain of modality may be organized. The article also considers the types of criteria that have been proposed to motivate the “cover category” of modality. Finally, it outlines a few features and properties frequently referenced in the literature on modality as characteristic of (some of) the modal categories, including subjectivity vs objectivity or intersubjectivity, performativity vs descriptivity, informational status, and the semantic scope of qualificational dimensions.

The chapter traces two stages of the rise of the may-under-hope construction of Late Modern English, present in examples like (i) Dearest, I hope we may be on such terms twenty years hence. Despite the archaic feel to it, this construction is in fact a very recent innovation that arose not earlier than the sixteenth century. I conjecture that its elevated flavor does not stem from its old age, but rather was inherited from another construction, with the inflectional subjunctive under hope. Along the way, I also present evidence that the textual absence of may under verbs of hoping before the rise of this construction was not due to narrow compositional semantics.

The introduction of the concept of computation in cognitive science is discussed in this article. Computationalism is usually introduced as an empirical hypothesis that can be disconfirmed. Processing information is surely an important aspect of cognition so if computation is information processing, then cognition involves computation. Computationalism becomes more significant when it has explanatory power. The most relevant and explanatory notion of computation is that associated with digital computers. Turing analyzed computation in terms of what are now called Turing machines that are the kind of simple processor operating on an unbounded tape. Turing stated that any function that can be computed by an algorithm could be computed by a Turing machine. McCulloch and Pitts's account of cognition contains three important aspects that include an analogy between neural processes and digital computations, the use of mathematically defined neural networks as models, and an appeal to neurophysiological evidence to support their neural network models. Computationalism involves three accounts of computation such as causal, semantic, and mechanistic. There are mappings between any physical system and at least some computational descriptions under the causal account. The semantic account may be formulated as a restricted causal account.

This chapter develops a contextualist account of normative language, focusing on broadly normative readings of modal verbs. The account draws on a more general framework for implementing a contextualist semantics and pragmatics, Discourse Contextualism. The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the discourse properties of normative language from a contextualist interpretation of an independently motivated formal semantics, along with principles of interpretation and conversation. In using normative language, interlocutors can exploit their grammatical and world knowledge, and general pragmatic reasoning skills, to manage an evolving system of norms. Discourse Contextualism provides a perspicuous framework for further philosophical theorizing about the nature of normativity, normative language, and normative judgment. Delineating these issues can help refine our understanding of the space of overall theories and motivate more fruitful ways the dialectics may proceed. Discourse Contextualism provides a linguistic basis for a more comprehensive theory of normativity and normative discourse and practice.

This chapter surveys some of the most important findings in the literature regarding the syntagmatic interactions between linguistic expressions of mood and of modality and some other categories, and regarding how these interactions may be explained in terms of the semantic properties of the categories involved. After a preliminary exemplification of the syntagmatic interaction of mood with other categories, showing how infelicitous combinations are either blocked or reinterpreted, the chapter deals, in subsequent sections, with the interaction with modal and modality related markers, with tense, with aspect, with negation, and with person. It concludes with a further discussion of the factors regulating the interaction of mood with other categories, viz., most importantly, functional (in)compatibility, markedness and economy.

The chapter investigates aspects of variation in Old English modals with respect to functional status, modal base, modal force, and event realization under the modals in the actual world. The main goal is to view—in tandem, rather than in isolation—aspects of variation that are of interest at the syntax–semantics interface. The chapter focuses on three modals, the cognates of ‘can,’ ‘may,’ and ‘must,’ which show the full range of variation available in the categories investigated. The role of circumstantial modality in the diachronic development is underlined. It is furthermore argued that the modals of the period occupy a structural position in the aspectual domain. Evidence for functional status includes ellipsis, topicalization, and the complementary distribution with the aspectual prefix ge-.

This chapter offers a functional account of why the mind—when free from the demands of a task or the constraints of heightened emotions—tends to wander from one topic to another, in a ceaseless and seemingly random fashion. We propose the default variability hypothesis, which builds on William James’s phenomenological account of thought as a form of mental locomotion, as well as on recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and computational modeling. Specifically, the default variability hypothesis proposes that the default mode of mental content production yields the frequent arising of new mental states that have heightened variability of content over time. This heightened variability in the default mode of mental content production may be an adaptive mechanism that (1) enhances episodic memory efficiency through de-correlating individual episodic memories from one another via temporally spaced reactivations, and (2) facilitates semantic knowledge optimization by providing optimal conditions for interleaved learning.

Lyric genres have often been associated with a particular type of aesthetic experience in which semantic concreteness may give way to more diffused modes of perception and feeling, creating vague yet all-pervasive moods or atmospheres. This phenomenon has been largely attributed to lyric poetry’s heightened musicality, which in antiquity was further enhanced by actual singing and instrumental accompaniment. This chapter contends that in some of Plato’s dialogues interesting versions of this broader issue are either openly addressed or treated as an implicit struggle that results sometimes in negative, while at other times in remarkably creative, responses. In either case, Plato’s awareness and handling of this issue illuminates neglected but exciting aspects of his encounter with mousikē, mimesis, and the verbal arts.

If a discipline rests on a canonical body of knowledge to be learned, understood, and mastered, if it marks out a cognitive space that has been delineated by a particular horizon, then philology—and, by extension, philosophy—may be located more at the margins of these disciplinary sites. Perhaps it would be more correct to regard both philology and philosophy as pre-disciplines, as modes of free but rational questioning that comprise the conditions of possibility for authorized, regulated, disciplinary work. To illustrate, the present article turns to Pascal Quignard’s essayistic reflections as an example of a philological approach that concerns the pre- or proto-semantic production of meaning, focusing in particular on the figure of the horizon and on the concept of the aorist that inheres in the French jadis.

In Swiss German, which encodes a phonological contrast in consonant length, consonant duration signals the segment’s geminate status and, in medial position, indicates the word’s syllable structure. The present work investigates the interaction between these aspects of durational processing using the N400, an electrophysiological component which offers a fine-grained measure of the success of lexical access. A cross-modal semantic priming ERP study tested to what extent words with medial consonants whose duration had been phonetically lengthened or shortened (leading to an incorrect syllable structure) trigger lexical access. Behavioural and ERP results revealed a processing asymmetry: lengthening a singleton does not negatively impact lexical access, but shortening a geminate does. This asymmetry supports an underspecification account of the geminate/singleton contrast, and may indicate a bias towards initially parsing acoustic input according to a CV template.

This chapter aims to provide a large overview of research focusing on the development of modality and mood during first language acquisition. This overview synthesizes results concerning both early and later phases of development, within and across a large number of languages, and including some more peripheral categories, such as evidentials and tense–aspect markings. Results recurrently show the earlier acquisition of agent-oriented modality as compared to epistemic modality. However, cross-linguistic variation has raised some questions about this acquisition sequence, suggesting that language-specific properties may partially impact timing during acquisition. In addition, findings about later phases show a long developmental process whereby children gradually come to master complex semantic and pragmatic modal distinctions. The discussion highlights the contribution of these conclusions to current theoretical debates, such as the role of input factors and the relation between language and cognition during ontogenesis.

Non-verbal numerical competence, such as the estimation of set size, is rooted in biological primitives that can also be explored in animals. Over the past years, the anatomical substrates and neuronal mechanisms of numerical cognition in primates have been unravelled down to the level of single neurons. Studies with behaviourally-trained monkeys have identified a parietofrontal network of individual neurons selectively tuned to the number of items (cardinal aspect) or the rank of items in a sequence (ordinal aspect). The properties of these neurons’ numerosity tuning curves can explain fundamental psychophysical phenomena, such as the numerical distance and size effect. Functionally overlapping groups of parietal neurons represent not only numerable-discrete quantity (numerosity), but also innumerable-continuous quantity (extent) and relations between quantities (proportions), supporting the idea of a generalized magnitude system in the brain. Moreover, many neurons in the prefrontal cortex establish semantic associations between signs and abstract numerical categories, a neuronal precursor mechanisms that may ultimately give rise to symbolic number processing in humans. These studies establish putative homologies between the monkey and human brain, and demonstrate the suitability of non-human primates as model system to explore the neurobiological roots of the brain’s non-verbal quantification system, which may constitute the phylogenetic and ontogenetic foundation of all further, more elaborate numerical skills in humans.

There is a story about laws of nature that needs telling; the author just didn’t expect to be the one to tell it. It threatens to undermine arguments against Humeanism that are based on anti-supervenience examples of the sort the author has advanced. Combining a semantics for modal sentences with a notion of laws as regularities that are true because of nature yields a concept of lawhood that is rich in anti-Humean ways. For example, laws of nature are not mere regularities and they do govern. It can even turn out true to say about a Humean base, ‘It is a law that F = ma.’ It can also turn out true to say about that very same Humean base, ‘It is not a law that F = ma.’ Should this story be true—and the author is not so sure it isn’t—the core of anti-Humeanism would be based on a conflation.

This article examines the philosophical methodology of intuitions beginning with an argument developed by Max Deutsch and Herman Cappelen over the descriptive adequacy of what Cappelen calls “methodological rationalism”, and their own preferred view, “intuition nihilism”. Based on inadequacies in both accounts, it offers a descriptive take on intuition-deploying philosophical practice today via what it calls “Protean Crypto-Rationalism”. It then describes the epistemic profile of the appeal to intuition, listing four key aspects of the basic shape of intuition-deploying philosophical practice: primacy of cases, flexibility of report format, freedom of stipulation, and interpretation-hungry. It also considers several sources of error for intuitions featured in at least the informal methodological lore of philosophy, namely: misconstruals, modal confusions, pragmatics/semantics confusion, and “tin ear”. Finally, it explores the problem of methodological ignorance and inferential demand, particularly the typical practices of philosophical inference that operate on the premises delivered by appeal to intuitions.

The article gives an overview of several distinct theses demonstrating representationalism in cognitive science. Strong representationalism is the view that representational mental states have a specific form, in particular, that they are functionally characterizable relations to internal representations. The proponents of strong representationalism typically suggest that the system of internal representations constitutes a language with a combinatorial syntax and semantics. Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson argued that mental representations might be more analogous to maps than to sentences. Waskan argued that mental representations are akin to scale models. Fodor and Fodor and Pylyshyn argued that certain pervasive features of thought can only be explained by the hypothesis that thought takes place in a linguistic medium. A physical symbol system (PSS) hypothesis is a version of strong representationalism, the idea that representational mental states are functionally characterizable relations to internal representations. The representational content has a significant role in computational models of cognitive capacities. The internal states and structures posited in computational theories of cognition are distally interpreted in such theories. The distal objects and properties that determine the representational content of the posited internal states and structures serve to type-individuate a computationally characterized mechanism. Strong Representationalism, as exemplified by the PSS hypothesis, construes mental processes as operations on internal representations.

Left unilateral spatial neglect is the most frequent and disabling neuropsychological syndrome caused by lesions to the right hemisphere. Over 50% of right-brain-damaged patients show neglect, while right neglect after left-hemispheric damage is less frequent. Neglect patients are unable to orient towards the side contralateral to the lesion, to detect and report sensory events in that portion of space, as well as to explore it by motor action. Neglect is a multicomponent disorder, which may involve the contralesional side of the body or of extra-personal physical or imagined space, different sensory modalities, specific domains (e.g. ‘neglect dyslexia’), and worsen sensorimotor deficits. Neglect is due to higher-order unilateral deficits of spatial attention and representation, so that patients are not aware of contralesional events, which, however, undergo a substantial amount of unconscious processing up to the semantic level. Cross-modal sensory integration is also largely preserved. Neglect is primarily a spatially specific disorder of perceptual consciousness. The responsible lesions involve a network including the fronto-temporo-parietal cortex (particularly the posterior-inferior parietal lobe, at the temporo-parietal junction), their white matter connections, and some subcortical grey nuclei (thalamus, basal ganglia). Damage to primary sensory and motor regions is not associated to neglect. A variety of physiological lateralized and asymmetrical sensory stimulations (vestibular, optokinetic, prism adaptation, motor activation), and transcranial electrical and magnetic stimulations, may temporarily improve or worsen neglect. Different procedures have been successfully developed to rehabilitate neglect, using both ‘top down’ (training the voluntary orientation of attention) and ‘bottom up’ (the above-mentioned stimulations) approaches.

This is a book on the logic of design and hence on how we make, transform, refine, and improve the objects of our knowledge. The starting point is that reality provides the data, to be understood as constraining affordances, and we transform them into information, like semantic engines. Such transformation or repurposing is not equivalent to portraying, or picturing, or photographing, or photocopying anything. It is more like cooking: the dish does not represent the ingredients, it uses them to make something else out of them, yet the reality of the dish and its properties hugely depend on the reality and the properties of the ingredients. Models are not representations understood as pictures, but interpretations understood as data elaborations, of systems. Thus, the whole book may also be read as an articulation and defence of the thesis that knowledge is design, and that philosophy is the ultimate form of conceptual design. This is the third volume in a tetralogy that includes The Philosophy of Information (OUP 2011) and The Ethics of Information (OUP 2013). The three volumes are all written as stand-alone, but they are complementary. By working like a hinge between the two previous books, this third one prepares the basis for volume four, on The Politics of Information. There, the epistemological, conceptual, and normative constructionism supports the study of the design opportunities we have in understanding and shaping what I like to call “the human project” in our information societies.

Dictionary Poetics analyses book-length poems from a number of writers who have used particular editions of specific dictionaries to structure their work. Spanning most of the 20th century, this study investigates poems by Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen (two “Objectivist” writers of the late 1920s and early 1930s), Clark Coolidge and Tina Darragh (two “Language Poets” with books from the 1970s and 1980s, respectively), and Harryette Mullen (a post-Black-Arts writer who flourished in the 1990s). By reverse-engineering poems, this study sets the critical record straight on multiple counts. Moreover, reading these poems in tandem with their source texts puts paid to the notion that even the most abstract and fragmentary avant-garde poems are nonsensical, meaningless, or impenetrable. When read from the right perspective, passages that at first appear to be discontinuous, irrational, or hopelessly cryptic suddenly appear logically consistent, rationally structured, and thematically coherent. Indeed, beyond the particular arguments and local readings, Dictionary Poetics argues that the new ways of writing pioneered by the literary avant-garde invite new ways of reading commensurate with their modes of composition. Dictionary Poetics maps and articulates the material surfaces of poems, tracing the networks of signifiers that undergird the more familiar representational schemes with which conventional readings have been traditionally concerned. In the process, this book demonstrates that new ways of reading can yield significant interpretive payoffs, open otherwise unavailable critical insights into the formal and semantic structures of a composition and transform our understanding of literary texts at their most fundamental levels.

The monograph reflects the problems of Russian psycholinguistics from the moment of its inception in Russia to the present day and presents its main directions that are currently developing. In addition, theoretical developments and practical results obtained in the framework of different directions and research centers are described in a concise form. The task of the book is to reflect, as far as it is possible in one edition, firstly, the history of the formation of Russian psycholinguistics; secondly, its methodology and developed methods; thirdly, the results obtained in different research centers and directions in different regions of Russia; fourthly, to outline the main directions of the further development of Russian psycholinguistics. There is no doubt that in the theoretical, methodological and applied aspects, the main problems and the results of their development by Russian psycholinguistics have no analogues in world linguistics and psycholinguistics, or are represented by completely original concepts and methods. We have tried to show this uniqueness of the problematics and the methodological equipment of Russian psycholinguistics in this book. The main role in the formation of Russian psycholinguistics was played by the Moscow psycholinguistic school of A.A. Leontyev. It still defines the main directions of Russian psycholinguistics. Russian psycholinguistics (the theory of speech activity - TSA) is based on the achievements of Russian psychology: a cultural-historical approach to the analysis of mental phenomena L.S. Vygotsky and the system-activity approach of A.N. Leontyev. Moscow is the most "psycholinguistic region" of Russia - INL RAS, Moscow State University, Moscow State Linguistic University, RUDN, Moscow State Pedagogical University, Moscow State Pedagogical University, Sechenov University, Moscow State University and other Moscow universities. Saint Petersburg psycholinguists have significant achievements, especially in the study of neurolinguistic problems, ontolinguistics. The most important feature of Russian psycholinguistics is the widespread development of psycholinguistics in the regions, the emergence of recognized psycholinguistic research centers - St. Petersburg, Tver, Saratov, Perm, Ufa, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Kursk, Chelyabinsk; psycholinguistics is represented in Cherepovets, Ivanovo, Volgograd, Vyatka, Kaluga, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Abakan, Maikop, Barnaul, Ulan-Ude, Yakutsk, Syktyvkar, Armavir and other cities; in Belarus - Minsk, in Ukraine - Lvov, Chernivtsi, Kharkov, in the DPR - Donetsk, in Kazakhstan - Alma-Ata, Chimkent. Our researchers work in Bulgaria, Hungary, Vietnam, China, France, Switzerland. There are Russian psycholinguists in Canada, USA, Israel, Austria and a number of other countries. All scientists from these regions and countries have contributed to the development of Russian psycholinguistics, to the development of psycholinguistic theory and methods of psycholinguistic research. Their participation has not been forgotten. We tried to present the main Russian psycholinguists in the Appendix - in the sections "Scientometrics", "Monographs and Manuals" and "Dissertations", even if there is no information about them in the Electronic Library and RSCI. The principles of including scientists in the scientometric list are presented in the Appendix. Our analysis of the content of the resulting monograph on psycholinguistic research in Russia allows us to draw preliminary conclusions about some of the distinctive features of Russian psycholinguistics: 1. cultural-historical approach to the analysis of mental phenomena of L.S.Vygotsky and the system-activity approach of A.N. Leontiev as methodological basis of Russian psycholinguistics; 2. theoretical nature of psycholinguistic research as a characteristic feature of Russian psycholinguistics. Our psycholinguistics has always built a general theory of the generation and perception of speech, mental vocabulary, linked specific research with the problems of ontogenesis, the relationship between language and thinking; 3. psycholinguistic studies of speech communication as an important subject of psycholinguistics; 4. attention to the psycholinguistic analysis of the text and the development of methods for such analysis; 5. active research into the ontogenesis of linguistic ability; 6. investigation of linguistic consciousness as one of the important subjects of psycholinguistics; 7. understanding the need to create associative dictionaries of different types as the most important practical task of psycholinguistics; 8. widespread use of psycholinguistic methods for applied purposes, active development of applied psycholinguistics. The review of the main directions of development of Russian psycholinguistics, carried out in this monograph, clearly shows that the direction associated with the study of linguistic consciousness is currently being most intensively developed in modern Russian psycholinguistics. As the practice of many years of psycholinguistic research in our country shows, the subject of study of psycholinguists is precisely linguistic consciousness - this is a part of human consciousness that is responsible for generating, understanding speech and keeping language in consciousness. Associative experiments are the core of most psycholinguistic techniques and are important both theoretically and practically. The following main areas of practical application of the results of associative experiments can be outlined. 1. Education. Associative experiments are the basis for constructing Mind Maps, one of the most promising tools for systematizing knowledge, assessing the quality, volume and nature of declarative knowledge (and using special techniques and skills). Methods based on smart maps are already widely used in teaching foreign languages, fast and deep immersion in various subject areas. 2. Information search, search optimization. The results of associative experiments can significantly improve the quality of information retrieval, its efficiency, as well as adaptability for a specific person (social group). When promoting sites (promoting them in search results), an associative experiment allows you to increase and improve the quality of the audience reached. 3. Translation studies, translation automation. An associative experiment can significantly improve the quality of translation, take into account intercultural and other social characteristics of native speakers. 4. Computational linguistics and automatic word processing. The results of associative experiments make it possible to reveal the features of a person's linguistic consciousness and contribute to the development of automatic text processing systems in a wide range of applications of natural language interfaces of computer programs and robotic solutions. 5. Advertising. The use of data on associations for specific words, slogans and texts allows you to predict and improve advertising texts. 6. Social relationships. The analysis of texts using the data of associative experiments makes it possible to assess the tonality of messages (negative / positive moods, aggression and other characteristics) based on user comments on the Internet and social networks, in the press in various projections (by individuals, events, organizations, etc.) from various social angles, to diagnose the formation of extremist ideas. 7. Content control and protection of personal data. Associative experiments improve the quality of content detection and filtering by identifying associative fields in areas subject to age restrictions, personal information, tobacco and alcohol advertising, incitement to ethnic hatred, etc. 8. Gender and individual differences. The data of associative experiments can be used to compare the reactions (and, in general, other features of thinking) between men and women, different social and age groups, representatives of different regions. The directions for the further development of Russian psycholinguistics from the standpoint of the current state of psycholinguistic science in the country are seen by us, first of all:  in the development of research in various areas of linguistic consciousness, which will contribute to the development of an important concept of speech as a verbal model of non-linguistic consciousness, in which knowledge revealed by social practice and assigned by each member of society during its inculturation is consolidated for society and on its behalf;  in the expansion of the problematics, which is formed under the influence of the growing intercultural communication in the world community, which inevitably involves the speech behavior of natural and artificial bilinguals in the new object area of psycholinguistics;  in using the capabilities of national linguistic corpora in the interests of researchers studying the functioning of non-linguistic and linguistic consciousness in speech processes;  in expanding research on the semantic perception of multimodal texts, the scope of which has greatly expanded in connection with the spread of the Internet as a means of communication in the life of modern society;  in the inclusion of the problems of professional communication and professional activity in the object area of psycholinguistics in connection with the introduction of information technologies into public practice, entailing the emergence of new professions and new features of the professional ethos;  in the further development of the theory of the mental lexicon (identifying the role of different types of knowledge in its formation and functioning, the role of the word as a unit of the mental lexicon in the formation of the image of the world, as well as the role of the natural / internal metalanguage and its specificity in speech activity);  in the broad development of associative lexicography, which will meet the most diverse needs of society and cognitive sciences. The development of associative lexicography may lead to the emergence of such disciplines as associative typology, associative variantology, associative axiology;  in expanding the spheres of applied use of psycholinguistics in social sciences, sociology, semasiology, lexicography, in the study of the brain, linguodidactics, medicine, etc. This book is a kind of summarizing result of the development of Russian psycholinguistics today. Each section provides a bibliography of studies on the relevant issue. The Appendix contains the scientometrics of leading Russian psycholinguists, basic monographs, psycholinguistic textbooks and dissertations defended in psycholinguistics. The content of the publications presented here is convincing evidence of the relevance of psycholinguistic topics and the effectiveness of the development of psycholinguistic problems in Russia.