University of Chicago Press: New Titles in Language and Linguistics: General Language and Linguistics

Does Science Need a Global Language?

Scott L. Montgomery; David Crystal — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In early 2012, the global scientific community erupted with news that the elusive Higgs boson had likely been found, providing potent validation for the Standard Model of how the universe works. Scientists from more than one hundred countries contributed to this discovery—proving, beyond any doubt, that a new era in science had arrived, an era of multinationalism and cooperative reach. Globalization, the Internet, and digital technology all play a role in making this new era possible, but something more fundamental is also at work. In all scientific endeavors lies the ancient drive for sharing ideas and knowledge, and now this can be accomplished in a single tongue— English. But is this a good thing?

In Does Science Need a Global Language?, Scott L. Montgomery seeks to answer this question by investigating the phenomenon of global English in science, how and why it came about, the forms in which it appears, what advantages and disadvantages it brings, and what its future might be. He also examines the consequences of a global tongue, considering especially emerging and developing nations, where research is still at a relatively early stage and English is not yet firmly established.

Throughout the book, he includes important insights from a broad range of perspectives in linguistics, history, education, geopolitics, and more. Each chapter includes striking and revealing anecdotes from the front-line experiences of today’s scientists, some of whom have struggled with the reality of global scientific English. He explores topics such as student mobility, publication trends, world Englishes, language endangerment, and second language learning, among many others. What he uncovers will challenge readers to rethink their assumptions about the direction of contemporary science, as well as its future.

Core and the Periphery

Philip Hofmeister; Elisabeth Norcliffe — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Computational Introduction to Linguistics

Almerindo E. Ojeda — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

In this book, Almerindo E. Ojeda offers a unique perspective on linguistics by discussing developing computer programs that will assign particular sounds to particular meanings and, conversely, particular meanings to particular sounds. Since these assignments are to operate efficiently over unbounded domains of sound and sense, they can begin to model the two fundamental modalities of human language—speaking and hearing. The computational approach adopted in this book is motivated by our struggle with one of the key problems of contemporary linguistics—figuring out how it is that language emerges from the brain.

Concreteness in Grammar

Lise Dobrin — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Based on an exhaustive search of published sources and the author’s firsthand fieldwork, Concreteness in Grammar explores the role of phonological form in the noun class systems of the Arapesh languages spoken in Papua New Guinea. Linguists have long known that formal critical play a role alongside semantics in the classification of lexical terms. In Arapesh, virtually every possible final ending of a noun is represented in the paradigm of noun class and agreement markers, reflecting an interpenetraion of sound structure and grammar that many theories would disallow as wildly unconstrained. In this book, Lise Dobrin describes these formal patterns in order to reveal their naturalness and elegance, establishing their place in a typology of noun class systems and drawing out their significance for theories of grammatical architecture.

A rigorous study of an endangered language, Concreteness in Grammar revisits the definition of a morpheme and looks at unusual language patterns to reveal the naturalness of grammar.

Formal Methods and Empirical Practices

Roberta Ferrario; Viola Schiaffonati — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The philosopher Patrick Suppes has developed a unique and influential approach to studying the foundations of science—he combines an understanding of the main principles of scientific theories in axiomatic terms and formal models with a hands-on approach. While moving the study of the philosophy of science out of the parlor and into the lab, he often comes up with original results from the psychology of learning to the theory of measurement and quantum mechanics. This book searches for a common thread in Suppes’s multifaceted work through a series of conversations with the man himself and illuminates many of the more challenging aspects of his philosophy.

Rimbaud's Impressionist Poetics

Aimée Israel-Pelletier — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

In the early 1870s, Arthur Rimbaud, indisputable genius of French poetry, invented a new style that captured the energy and visual complexity of modern life, changing fundamentally the way subsequent poetry would be written. At the same time in Paris and London, impressionist painters were revolutionizing the way art was produced, exhibited, viewed, and discussed. This book places Rimbaud’s radical poetic experiments alongside the equally disruptive experiments of impressionist painters and advances the argument that impressionism’s laissez-faire ideology helps explain Rimbaud’s decision to abandon poetry for commerce.