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Lexical-Functional Grammar (Syntax and Semantics, Volume 34)
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Lexical-Functional Grammar (Syntax and Semantics, Volume 34)Volume 34 of Syntax and Semantics is a thorough and accessible overview and introduction to Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), a theory of the content and representation of different aspects of linguistic structure and the relations that hold between them. The book motivates and describes the two syntactic structures of LFG: surface phrasal organization is represented by a context-free phrase structure tree, and more abstract functional syntactic relations like subject and object are represented separately, at functional structure.
 
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The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
34
 
 
The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)Finally, we are learning that simplicity equals sanity. We're rebelling against technology that's too complicated, DVD players with too many menus, and software accompanied by 75-megabyte "read me" manuals. The iPod's clean gadgetry has made simplicity hip. But sometimes we find ourselves caught up in the simplicity paradox: we want something that's simple and easy to use, but also does all the complex things we might ever want it to do.
In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design--guidelines for needing less and actually getting more.
 
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Introducing Evolutionary Psychology
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Introducing Evolutionary PsychologyThis book fulfills the goal of giving a simple overview of the basic concepts of evolutionary psychology.
The authors describe the origins of evolutionary psychology and how it's distinguished from the larger field of general psychology. Various topics covered include the evolution of human social behavior (and why reputation is so important to us), dietary habits (why fatty, sugar-laden foods are so hard to ignore) and mating patterns.
A lot of drawings clearly explain the concepts.
 
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Top 100 Careers for College Graduates, Your Complete Guide book to Major Jobs in Many Fields
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Who Should Use This Book?
This is more than a book of job descriptions. I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to make its contents useful for a variety of situations, including
Exploring career options. The job descriptions in Part II give a wealth of information on many of the most desirable jobs in the labor market. The assessment in Part I can help you focus your career options.
Considering more education or training. The information helps you avoid costly mistakes in choosing a career or deciding on additional training or education—and it increases your chances of planning a bright future.
Job seeking. This book helps you identify new job targets, prepare for interviews, and write targeted resumes.  The advice in Part III has been proven to cut job search time in half.
Career planning. The job descriptions help you explore your options, and Parts III and IV provide career planning advice and other useful information.
 
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Speech Acoustics and Phonetics: Selected Writings
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Speech Acoustics and Phonetics: Selected WritingsThe overall aim of the book is to provide an integrated view of the separate stages of the speech chain, covering the production process, speech data analysis, and speech perception. Analyses of information bearing elements of the speech signal have found applications in linguistic theory and in the knowledge base of speech technology with special reference to speech synthesis.
The book contains 19 selected articles organized in 6 chapters: Speech research overview with a historical outline, Speech production and synthesis, The voice source, Speech analysis and features, Speech perception, Prosody. Each chapter is preceded by an introduction including suggestions for additional reading. A list of all the authors publications since 1945 is included. It is supplemented by an ordering in categories. The articles have been selected to ensure representative coverage of the field. Some of them, primarily those on speech acoustics and the human voice source, have been previously published. During the last 15 years, a major emphasis has been on speech prosody with several novel approaches. A recent major article provides a broad frame starting with aerodynamics and voice source properties, leading up to intonation analysis, prosodic grouping, and rules for text-to-speech synthesis. These are illustrated in an audio file. A novel feature introduced in analysis as well as synthesis is a parameter of perceived syllable and word prominence with acoustical correlates and ties to lexical categories. The author was involved in early developments of distinctive feature theory together with Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle. Applications to Swedish are contained in the book. A major issue in current phonology and phonetics has been the search for absolute invariance of speech features. However, with the growing insight into contextual variability, this remains a pseudo problem. In order to approach the essence of the speech code, we need to structure variability with respect to all possible contextual factors. As claimed by the author, this is not only a requirement for a sound development of general phonetics and phonology. It is also a prerequisite for realizing advanced aims of speech technology. Computer power cannot substitute fundamental knowledge of the human speech communication process. The book should accordingly be of interest for several disciplines, not only speech technology, linguistics, phonetics, and acoustics, but also for psychology and physiology of speech and hearing with applications in medical science.

 
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