While cognitive changes in aging and neurodegenerative disease have been widely studied, language changes in these populations are less well understood. Inflecting novel words in a language with complex inflectional paradigms provides a good opportunity to observe how language processes change in normal and abnormal aging. Studies of language acquisition suggest that children inflect novel words based on their phonological similarity to real words they already know. It is unclear whether speakers continue to use the same strategy when encountering novel (...) words throughout the lifespan or whether adult speakers apply symbolic rules. We administered a simple speech elicitation task involving Finnish‐conforming pseudo‐words and real Finnish words to healthy older adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) to investigate inflectional choices in these groups and how linguistic variables and disease severity predict inflection patterns. Phonological resemblance of novel words to both a regular and an irregular inflectional type, as well as bigram frequency of the novel words, significantly influenced participants' inflectional choices for novel words among the healthy elderly group and people with AD. The results support theories of inflection by phonological analogy (single‐route models) and contradict theories advocating for formal symbolic rules (dual‐route models). (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive study of Oakeshott’s conception of political activity. The author first examines Oakeshott in the contexts of liberal, conservative and Idealist thought, and then presents a detailed interpretation of the change in his conception of politics in the context of British postwar political thought. It is argued that Oakeshott’s conception of political activity shifted from a near contempt of politics towards the applauding of politics as a deliberative and reflective activity. The development is disclosed by examining (...) the change in his key concepts, such as authority and tradition. Accordingly, some rather unexpected aspects of Oakeshott’s thought, such as his close relationship to the linguistic turn, appear. The author argues that although Oakeshott cannot exactly be classified as belonging to that group of political philosophers for whom politics represents a superior human activity, his later work presents an important and original view of politics as an art of contingency. (shrink)

Im Zentrum des Werkes von Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) steht die Frage nach der Vernunft der Praxis und der Praxis der Vernunft. Dieses klassische Thema der praktischen Philosophie, das heute im Hintergrund verschiedener Debatten in Philosophie und Politikwissenschaft steht, leitete Oakeshott in seiner Auseinandersetzung mit der modernen Politik. Die in dem Sammelband vereinigten Beitrage bieten einen Uberblick uber die internationale Forschungslage; ihr gemeinsamer Angelpunkt ist Oakeshotts Praxisbegriff: Diskutiert wird seine praktische Bedeutung im Durchgang durch die grundlegenden politischen und gesellschaftlichen Problemfragen der (...) Gegenwart, seine theoretische Leistungsfahigkeit ist Gegenstand vergleichender Perspektiven, die vor allem die deutschen Zeitgenossen wie H. Arendt, H.-G. Gadamer, G. Simmel oder L. Strauss einbeziehen. Der vorliegende Band unternimmt es, die seit mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten intensiv gefuhrte, vor allem angelsachsische Debatte um Oakeshotts Denken in die einschlagigen deutschen Diskussionen zu tragen und die Anknupfungspunkte sichtbar zu machen, die sein facettenreiches Werk fur die Verstandigung uber eine humane Praxis in den Konflikten des 21. Jahrhunderts bietet. Mit Beitragen von: Josiah Lee Auspitz, Michael Becker, Wendell John Coats Jr., Peter Finn, Jurgen Gebhardt, Steven A. Gerencser, Michael Grossheim, Michael Henkel, Hans Jorg Hennecke, Bart van Klink, Silviya Lechner, Oliver W. Lembcke, Kenneth B. McIntyre, Efraim Podoksik, Rainer Schmidt, Suvi Soininen, Judith A. Swanson, Martyn P. Thompson. (shrink)