Syntactic Carpentry: An Emergentist Approach to Syntax Syntactic Carpentry: An Emergentist Approach to Syntax
presents a groundbreaking approach to the study of sentence formation.
Building on the emergentist thesis that the structure and use of
language is shaped by more basic, non-linguistic forces—rather than by
an innate Universal Grammar—William O'Grady shows how the defining
properties of various core syntactic phenomena (phrase structure,
co-reference, control, agreement, contraction, and extraction) follow
from the operation of a linear, efficiency-driven processor. This in
turn leads to a compelling new view of sentence formation that subsumes
syntactic theory into the theory of sentence processing, eliminating
grammar in the traditional sense from the study of the language
faculty. With this text, O'Grady advances a growing body
of literature on emergentist approaches to language, and situates this
work in a broader picture that also includes attention to key issues in
the study of language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and
agrammaticism. This book constitutes essential reading for anyone interested in syntax
and its place in the larger enterprise of cognitive science. The primary objective of this book is to advance the emergentist thesis
by applying it to a difficult and important set of problems that arise
in the syntax of natural language. The particular idea that I explore
is that the defining properties of many important syntactic phenomena arise from the operation of a
general efficiency-driven processor rather than from autonomous
grammatical principles. As I will try to explain in much more detail in
the pages that follow, this sort of approach points toward a possible
reduction of the theory of sentence structure to the theory of sentence
processing.
Stock Investing, 2nd Edition covers all the proven tactics and strategies for picking the right stocks. Packed with savvy tips on today’s best investment opportunities, this book provides a down-to-earth, straightforward approach to making money on the market without the fancy lingo.
General Relativity and Gravitation. Vol.1-2 by A. Held (ed.)
These volumes offer a number of articles dealing with quantization and general relativity. Within this field there are several approaches. The oldest of these uses the canonical approach to relativity, a topic to which a large portion of Volume 1 is devoted. In addition to the article on quantization, other problems that are discussed using this formalism are the Cauchy problem, the positive mass conjecture, and the Hamiltonian structure of space-time. The necessary background is covered in an extensive review article.
Volume 1 also contains several articles expounding the gauge theory and the supergravity outlook. The more exotic approach through the use of twistors is described in Volume 2.
This exceptional book encompasses the entire range of writing skills that today’s experimental scientist may need to employ. Detailed chapters cover every type of science writing, from routine forms, such as laboratory notes, abstracts, and memoranda, to the more complex writing required in dissertations, journal articles, and grant proposals. Using numerous extended examples, the book offers students and professionals alike the thorough, practical advice they need to optimize the effectiveness of their written communications.
Robert Goldbort discusses how best to approach various writing tasks as well as how to deal with the everyday complexities that may get in the way of ideal practice—difficult collaborators, experiments gone wrong, funding rejections. He underscores the importance of an ethical approach to science and scientific communication and insists on the necessity of full disclosure.
For working scientists, those seeking employment in the sciences, students taking on writing assignments or oral presentations, and professionals who hope to publish or acquire funding, this volume is an essential resource.
Ideal for writing a short story, essay, review, or report, this guide provides beginning writers with the hands-on direction they need to improve their writing techniques and ability. Using a six-step approach to writing, this resource covers brainstorming ideas, choosing a topic, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing. The tone is casual, the advice is straightforward, and the whole approach makes writing a skill that anyone can learn. Illustrations reinforce the ideas visually and help to break up the text into bite-sized chunks. An example section with worked examples of two kinds of writing—a creative writing piece and an essay—takes readers through the six steps, so they can watch writing develop from a blank page to a finished piece. Ideal for high school students but also appropriate for writers of all ages, this book also includes tips on user-friendly grammar, a table of different types of text, and a quick night-before-the-exam summary.
