Scientists have long theorized that abstract, symbolic thinking evolved to help humans negotiate such classically male activities as hunting, tool making, and warfare, and eventually developed into spoken language. In Finding Our Tongues, Dean Falk overturns this established idea, offering a daring new theory that springs from a simple observation: parents all over the world, in all cultures, talk to infants by using baby talk or “Motherese.” Falk shows how Motherese developed as a way of reassuring babies when mothers had to put them down in order to do work.
Philosophers have had an interest in language from the earliest times but the twentieth century, with its so-called 'linguistic turn' in philosophy, has seen a huge expansion of work focused specifically on language and its foundations. No branch of philosophy has been unaffected by this shift of emphasis. It is timely at the end of the century to review and assess the vast range of issues that have been developed and debated in this central area.
This book has resulted from a number of challenges and concerns that have emerged from both being a facilitator on various problem-based learning programmes and equipping other tutors to become facilitators. As a lecturer and researcher in higher education and as a consultant to those wishing to implement problem-based learning, I have developed a range of strategies, practices and perspectives about what appears to help and hinder the facilitation of problembased learning.
Barbara H. Partee has played a central role in developing the now-flourishing field of formal semantics, bringing the formal semantic approach developed by logicians together with a linguistically sophisticated account of the syntax of natural languages. She has continued to be a major contributor to semantics, offering general ideas that have helped to clarify the character of the enterprise as well as imaginative and persuasive detailed analyses. Compositionality in Formal Semantics is a collection of Partee's papers that have been influential in the field but are not all readily available, and includes a new introductory essay in which Partee reflects on how her thinking and the field of semantics have developed over the past 35 years. This collection is invaluable both for understanding the history and evolution of the field and for its contribution to ongoing research.
Medieval Italy was characterized by regular warfare among its numerous city-states, as well as internal strife within comunes as aristocratic factions fought each other for domination of the cities' governments. In this context, Italian warfare developed quickly, with the crossbow playing a key role in improving the armour technology of the Italian city militias that used them. This book traces...
