The discussion about the Raven Paradox is ever-renewing: after nearly 70 years, many authors propose from time to time new solutions, and many authors state that these solutions are unsatisfactory. It is worthy to be carefully noted that though most arguments in favor or against the paradox are based on the notion of “probability” and on the application of Bayes’ law, not one of them makes use of the Kolmogorov axiomatic theory of probability and on the subsequent notion of “random (...) variable”. This seems to be due to a preference for the purely logical interpretation of the notion of “probability” which makes it possible to assign a probability value to propositions expressing natural (universal) laws. This paper aims at presenting an attempt to contribute a solution to the paradox by the proposal of a different way to express universal natural laws and by the use of a language which does not allow one to apply probability to universal statements. (shrink)

While interactions with other animate beings seem mostly to serve our own human interests, there are, at times, fugitive glimpses, passing contacts, momentary motions, and fleeting feelings of vital connection with other life forms. Life phenomenology attempts to realize these relational, interactive and intercorporeal possibilities. It challenges the language game of presuming the muteness and bruteness of non-human creatures and, at best, of speaking for them. It critiques the capture of non-human species within the inhibiting ring of human functions (...) and forms to reveal feelings and flows of interspecies commonality. It brings to expression the experiences of being moved to act and speak with others who do not share the human tongue. In part a critique of the logocentric, anthropocentric phenomenologies of intentionality, life phenomenology is more positively a means of coming to terms with the life-affirming kinetic, kinesthetic and affective dynamics of interspecies relationality. I take up the interrogation of this phenomenality, this humanimality, with the assistance of phenomenological scholarship that lends fuller credence to the experiences we have of moving in concert with other animate beings. In doing so, I aim to show the important insights that life phenomenology offers us in fostering not only greater appreciation of, responsivenss to and connection with other animals, but also in indicating the qualitative dynamics of relating with greater animate consciousness to one anotherof our own animal kind. (shrink)

Ecosemiotics represents a theoretical approach to human ecology that can be applied across several disciplines. lts primary justification lies inthe ambition to transcend "Cartesian", conceptual dichotomies such as culture/nature. society/nature, mental/material. etc. It argues that ecosystems areconstituted no less by flows of signs than by flows of matter and energy. This paper discusses the roles of different kinds of hmnan sign systems in the ecologyof Amazonia, ranging from the phenomenology of unconscious sensations. through linguistic signs such as metaphors and ethnobiological (...) taxonomies, to money and the political economy of environmental destruction. Human-environmental relations mediated by direct, sensory and (oral) linguistic communication have tended to enhance biological diversity, suggesting modes of calibrating the long-term co-evolution of human and non-human populations. Economic sign systems, on the other hand, have rapidly and drastically transfonned human-environmental relations in Amazonia to the point where the entire rainforest ecosystem is illlder threat. In detaching themselves from the direct, "face-to-face" communication between humans and their natural environments, flows of money and commodities - and the decontextualized knowledge systems that they engender - have no means of staying geared to the long-term negotiation of local, ecological co-existence. It is argued that the ongoing deterioration of the biosphere can be viewed as a problem of communication, deserving semiotic analysis. (shrink)

Ecosemiotics represents a theoretical approach to human ecology that can be applied across several disciplines. lts primary justification lies inthe ambition to transcend "Cartesian", conceptual dichotomies such as culture/nature. society/nature, mental/material. etc. It argues that ecosystems areconstituted no less by flows of signs than by flows of matter and energy. This paper discusses the roles of different kinds of hmnan sign systems in the ecologyof Amazonia, ranging from the phenomenology of unconscious sensations. through linguistic signs such as metaphors and ethnobiological (...) taxonomies, to money and the political economy of environmental destruction. Human-environmental relations mediated by direct, sensory and (oral) linguistic communication have tended to enhance biological diversity, suggesting modes of calibrating the long-term co-evolution of human and non-human populations. Economic sign systems, on the other hand, have rapidly and drastically transfonned human-environmental relations in Amazonia to the point where the entire rainforest ecosystem is illlder threat. In detaching themselves from the direct, "face-to-face" communication between humans and their natural environments, flows of money and commodities - and the decontextualized knowledge systems that they engender - have no means of staying geared to the long-term negotiation of local, ecological co-existence. It is argued that the ongoing deterioration of the biosphere can be viewed as a problem of communication, deserving semiotic analysis. (shrink)

In his 1997 book, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, Andy Clark advocates ‘embodied, active cognition,’ to discuss the manner in which an autonomous, embodied agent interacts with its environment. The implication is that since our minds as well as our bodies are matter, and otherwise nothing special, it is inevitable that we humans are natural born cyborgs and the human-machine interface will before long become completely transparent to the point of being invisible. In his critique of (...) causality, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between mechanical actions and structure. What is significant in his argument is the idea of structure, specifically vital structure as mental calculation or as Merleau-Ponty calls it, nascent intelligibility. This leads to the possible conclusion that when human beings take up and utilize digital technology and even biotechnology, each living being measures the action of things upon itself and responds so as to delimit its milieu. Human engagement with technology is thus due to the fact that there is a network of significative intentions that are lived rather than due to the material nature of mind and body.Dans son livre de 1997 Being There : Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, Andy Clark préconise la « cognition incarnée, active » pour discuter la manière selon laquelle un agent autonome, incarné, interagit avec son environnement. L’implication est la suivante : puisque nos esprits et nos corps sont matière, et par ailleurs rien de spécial, il est inévitable que nous, humains, soyons des cyborgs nés et que l’interface humain-machine devienne d’ici peu complètement transparente, au point de devenir invisible. Dans sa critique de la causalité, Merleau-Ponty distingue les actions mécaniques de la structure. Ce qui importe dans l’argument, c’est l’idée de structure, spécifiquement la structure vitale comme calcul mental ou comme Merleau-Ponty l’appelle : l’intelligibilité à l’état naissant. Ce qui mène à la conclusion possible selon laquelle, quand l’être humain prend et utilise une technologie digitale voire une biotechnologie, chaque être vivant mesure l’action des choses sur lui-même et réagit de façon à délimiter son milieu. L’engagement humain avec la technologie est alors dû au fait qu’il y ait un réseau d’intentions significatives qui sont vécues plutôt que causées par la nature matérielle de l’esprit et du corps.Nel suo libro del 1997, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, Andy Clark si serve della nozione di “embodied, active cognition (cognizione attiva incarnata)” per spiegare il modo in cui un agente autonomo incarnato interagisce con il suo ambiente. Questo implica allo stesso tempo che: dal momento in cui le nostre menti, così come i nostri corpi, sono fatti di materia è inevitabile che noi umani nasciamo allo stesso tempo come cyborg, e poi che le interfacce uomo-macchina diverranno presto completamente trasparenti, al punto di risultare invisibili. Nella sua critica della causalità, Merleau-Ponty distingue tra azioni meccaniche e struttura. Quello che è particolarmente significativo nella sua argomentazione è l’idea di struttura, in quanto struttura propriamente vitale, come calcolo mentale o, come Merleau-Ponty la definisce, intelligibilità allo stato nascente. Questo porta alla conclusione possibile che quando gli esseri umani hanno a che fare e si servono della tecnologia digitale e anche della biotecnologia, ogni essere vivente si relazione con l’azione delle cose nei suoi confronti e vi risponde in modo tale da delimitare il suo ambiente (milieu). L’implicazione umana con la tecnologia può quindi essere compresa a partire dal fatto che esiste una rete di intenzioni significanti, che, più che essere dovute alla natura materiale di mente e corpo, sono vissute. (shrink)

Several language experiments have been carried out on apes and other animals aiming to narrow down the presumed qualitative gap that separates humans from other animals. These experiments, however, have been driven by the understanding of language as a purely symbolic sign system, often connected to a profound disinterest for language use in real situations and a propensity to perceive grammatical and syntactic information as the only fundamental aspects of human language. For these reasons, the (...) class='Hi'>language taught to apes tends to discard iconic and indexical elements in favour of symbolic signs. This paper sheds light on the iconic components of human language, with close attention to the iconic properties of language as present in the ape language experiments. We emphasise the role of the body in the interpretation and production of iconic signs, while demonstrating the need to take into account the Umwelt theory in the research paradigm of the experiments. Uexküll’s Umwelt theory is used to exemplify the methodological problems connected to the teaching of human language to other animal species; furthermore, we discuss how the modelling capacities of language affect the biological layer that constitutes the animal Umwelt. Language is analysed as a particular case of Umwelt transition, and as such its implications are further discussed in the article. With this paper, we enrich the discussion surrounding the human-ape pidgin language by advocating for the need to include iconic components as vital parts of this research area. With this inclusion, we uncover the inter-dependency of iconic, indexical and symbolic signs in human language, aiming to further develop the research paradigm of the ape language experiments. (shrink)

Which language should philosophers use: technical or common language? In a book as important for intellectual historians as it is for philosophers, Lodi Nauta addresses a vital question which still has resonance today: is the discipline of philosophy assisted or disadvantaged by employing a special vocabulary? By the Middle Ages philosophy had become a highly technical discipline, with its own lexicon and methods. The Renaissance humanist critique of this specialised language has been dismissed as philosophically superficial, but (...) the author demonstrates that it makes a crucial point: it is through the misuse of language that philosophical problems arise. He charts the influence of this critique on early modern philosophers, including Hobbes and Locke, and shows how it led to the downfall of medieval Aristotelianism and the gradual democratization of language and knowledge. His book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the transition from medieval to modern philosophy. (shrink)

Meta-languages are vital to the development and usage of formal systems, and yet the nature of meta-languages and associated notions require clarification. Here we attempt to provide a clear definition of the requirements for a language to be a meta-language, together with consideration of issues of proof theory, model theory and interpreters for such a language.

The chapters in this timely volume aim to answer the growing interest in Arthur Schopenhauer’s logic, mathematics, and philosophy of language by comprehensively exploring his work on mathematical evidence, logic diagrams, and problems of semantics. Thus, this work addresses the lack of research on these subjects in the context of Schopenhauer’s oeuvre by exposing their links to modern research areas, such as the “proof without words” movement, analytic philosophy and diagrammatic reasoning, demonstrating its continued relevance to current discourse on (...) logic. -/- Beginning with Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language, the chapters examine the individual aspects of his semantics, semiotics, translation theory, language criticism, and communication theory. Additionally, Schopenhauer’s anticipation of modern contextualism is analyzed. The second section then addresses his logic, examining proof theory, metalogic, system of natural deduction, conversion theory, logical geometry, and the history of logic. Special focus is given to the role of the Euler diagrams used frequently in his lectures and their significance to broader context of his logic. In the final section, chapters discuss Schopenhauer’s philosophy of mathematics while synthesizing all topics from the previous sections, emphasizing the relationship between intuition and concept. -/- Aimed at a variety of academics, including researchers of Schopenhauer, philosophers, historians, logicians, mathematicians, and linguists, this title serves as a unique and vital resource for those interested in expanding their knowledge of Schopenhauer’s work as it relates to modern mathematical and logical study. (shrink)

Persons with borderline personality disorder are often described as affected by extreme emotional fluctuations and by the sudden emergence of uncontrollable and disproportionate emotional reactions. Borderline persons frequently experience their own self as dim and fuzzy, are deprived of a stable sense of identity and unable to be steadily involved in a given life project. We will interpret these typical features as fluctuations between a clearly normative emotion such as anger and the more diffuse and confusing background of bad moods (...) like dysphoria. Our main focus will be on dysphoria. The intentional structure that characterizes much of human emotional experience, we shall argue, is absent in dysphoria. If we imagine emotions as fluxes of intentionality that innervate the body and connect it to the world, dysphoria is empty intentionality, so to speak, devoid of the moderating power of language and representation. Dysphoria exerts a centrifugal force which fragments the borderline person's representations of herself and of others, inducing a painful experience of incoherence and inner emptiness, a feeling of uncertainty and inauthenticity in interpersonal relationships, and an excruciating sense of futility and inanity of life. But it also entails a sense of vitality, although a disorganized, aimless, and explosive one -- a desperate vitality. (shrink)

Language and Materiality integrates linguistic anthropological and sociolinguistic scholarship on a range of topics: semiotic approaches to language, language commodification, sound, embodiment, mediatization, and aesthetics. Empirically rigorous, the volume engages scholars and students interested in language, its use, and meanings. It consists of three sections - 'Texts, Objects, Mediality', 'Sound, Aesthetics, Embodiment', and 'Time, Place, Circulation' - containing chapters and short commentaries, framed by a curated conversation about semiotics and materiality in anthropology. Each section theorizes intersections, (...) connections, and relationships between language and materiality across diverse topics and ethnographic contexts. The volume shows that materiality may be approached as a feature of political economy, sensual experience, aesthetics, and affective relationships in its relation to language as talk, register, genre, ideology, and acoustic object. It consists of new perspectives on materiality as a vital dimension of social life and signification in global capitalism, connecting inquiries on subjects as diverse as food, media, fonts, and music. (shrink)

Rather than the standard American story of an increasingly triumphant march of scientific inquiry towards structural phonology, Women, Language and Linguistics reveals linguistics where its purpose was communication; the appeal of languages lay in their diversity; and the authority of language lay in its speakers and writers. Julia S Falk explores the vital part which women have played in preserving a linguistics based on the reality and experience of language; this book finally brings to light a neglected (...) perspective for those working in linguistics and the history of linguistics. (shrink)

The question of language development and origin is a subject that is vital to our understanding of what it means to be human. This is reflected in the large range of academic disciplines that are dedicated to the subject. Language development has in particular been related to studies in cognitive capacity and the ability for mind reading, often termed a theory of mind. The Social Brain Hypothesis has been the only attempt to correlate a cognitive scale of complexity (...) incorporating a theory of mind and intentionality orders to the archaeological record and hominin phylogeny. However, a method is still lacking that allows a correlation of the orders of intentionality to the archaeological signatures that represent the physical expression of hominin behaviour. This paper is primarily concerned with introducing a new theoretical perspective – termed the identity model – which facilitates such a correlation between a scale of cognitive acuity, hominin behaviour through the archaeological record and subsequently language development within an evolutionary context. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the semiotic foundations of sociolinguistics. Starting from the definition of “sociolinguistics” given by the philosopher Adam Schaff, the paper examines in particular the notion of “critical sociolinguistics” as theorized by the Italian semiotician Ferruccio Rossi-Landi. The basis of the social dimension of language are to be found in what Rossi-Landi calls “social reproduction” which regards both verbal and non-verbal signs. Saussure’s notionof langue can be considered in this way, with reference not only to his Course (...) of General Linguistics, but also to his Harvard Manuscripts.The paper goes on trying also to understand Roland Barthes’s provocative definition of semiology as a part of linguistics (and not vice-versa) as well asdeveloping the notion of communication-production in this perspective. Some articles of Roman Jakobson of the sixties allow us to reflect in a manner which wenow call “socio-semiotic” on the processes of transformation of the “organic” signs into signs of a new type, which articulate the relationship between organicand instrumental. In this sense, socio-linguistics is intended as being sociosemiotics, without prejudice to the fact that the reference area must be human,since semiotics also has the prerogative of referring to the world of non-human vital signs.Socio-linguistics as socio-semiotics assumes the role of a “frontier” science, in the dual sense that it is not only on the border between science of language andthe anthropological and social sciences, but also that it can be constructed in a movement of continual “crossing frontiers” and of “contamination” betweenlanguages and disciplinary environments. (shrink)

Good communication is vital in healthcare both among healthcare professionals and be tween healthcare professionals and their patients And well written documents describing and or explaining the information in structured databases may be easier to comprehend more edifying and even more convincing than the structured data even when presented in tabu lar or graphic form Documents may be automatically generated from structured data using techniques from the eld of natural language generation These techniques are concerned with how the content (...) organisation and language used in a document can be dynamically selected depending on the audience and context They have been used to generate health education ma terials explanations and critiques in decision support systems and medical reports and progress notes.. (shrink)

Throughout most of the 20th century, analytical and reductionist approaches have dominated in biological, social, and humanistic sciences, including linguistics and communication. We generally believed we could account for fundamental phenomena in invoking basic elemental units. Although the amount of knowledge generated was certainly impressive, we have also seen limitations of this approach. Discovering the sound formants of human languages, for example, has allowed us to know vital aspects of the ‘material’ plane of verbal codes, but it tells us little (...) about significant aspects of their social functions. I firmly believe, therefore, that alongside a linguistics that looks ‘inward’ there should also be a linguistics that looks ‘outward’, or one even that is constructed ‘from the outside’, a linguistics that I refer to elsewhere as ‘holistic’ though it could be identified by a different name. My current vision is to promote simultaneously the perspective that goes from the part to the whole and that which goes from the whole to the parts, i.e., both from the top down and from the bottom up. This goal is shared with other disciplines which recognize that many phenomena related to life are interwoven, self-organising, emergent and processual. Thus, we need to re-examine how we have conceived of reality, both the way we have looked at it and the images we have used to talk about it. Several approaches now grouped under the label of complexity have been elaborated towards this objective of finding new concepts and ways of thinking that better fit the complex organisation of facts and events. (shrink)

This book provides the first English translations of pivotal essays and debates on the role of language politics, linguistics, and translation in Antonio Gramsci's influential cultural theory. It also includes new works from leading and up-and-coming anglophone scholars to create a vital resource for a wide variety of readers interested in Gramsci across many disciplines including cultural studies, critical political economy, social and political theory, literature, sociology, post-colonialism, and philosophy.

The role of culture in a field as vast as applied linguistics is so pronounced and vital that even a highly selective overview might not be sufficient to be comprehensive. What follows might be a synoptic account of the role of culture in the realm of applied linguistics. The enigmatic point which even makes the vast field of applied linguistics goes to unbeaten tracks is the similar nature of culture. Due to the aforementioned point, here the canonical overlap of them (...) is emphasised. Moreover, as culture and language are intrinsically intertwined, we decided to have a more cultural stance rather than a linguistic one. Therefore, first, we go through the major studies in connection with language and culture. These studies might fall into three broad categories, namely those relating to epistemology of culture, those relating to its relation to language, and finally those relating to its presentation through a given language. Then, we touch on the trends, and in the end we try sum up and to unravel, or better to say, to come to grips with this enigmatic riddle, culture. In other words, in conclusion, we attempt to portray what culture will be. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

Marjorie Perloff, among our foremost critics of twentieth-century poetry, argues that Ludwig Wittgenstein provided writers with a radical new aesthetic, a key to recognizing the inescapable strangeness of ordinary language. Taking seriously Wittgenstein's remark that "philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry," Perloff begins by discussing Wittgenstein the "poet." What we learn is that the poetics of everyday life is anything but banal. "This book has the lucidity and the intelligence we have come to (...) expect from Marjorie Perloff.--Linda Munk, American Literature "[Perloff] has brilliantly adapted Wittgenstein's conception of meaning and use to an analysis of contemporary language poetry."--Linda Voris, Boston Review " Wittgenstein's Ladder offers significant insights into the current state of poetry, literature, and literary study. Perloff emphasizes the vitality of reading and thinking about poetry, and the absolute necessity of pushing against the boundaries that define and limit our worlds."--David Clippinger, Chicago Review "Majorie Perloff has done more to illuminate our understanding of twentieth century poetic language than perhaps any other critic. . . . Entertaining, witty, and above all highly original."--Willard Bohn, Sub-Stance. (shrink)

This letter explores the intricate historical and contemporary links between large language models (LLMs) and cognitive science through the lens of information theory, statistical language models, and socioanthropological linguistic theories. The emergence of LLMs highlights the enduring significance of information‐based and statistical learning theories in understanding human communication. These theories, initially proposed in the mid‐20th century, offered a visionary framework for integrating computational science, social sciences, and humanities, which nonetheless was not fully fulfilled at that time. The subsequent (...) development of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, especially since the 1970s, provided critical perspectives and empirical methods that both challenged and enriched this framework. This letter proposes that two pivotal concepts derived from this development, metapragmatic function and indexicality, offer a fruitful theoretical perspective for integrating the semantic, textual, and pragmatic, contextual dimensions of communication, an amalgamation that contemporary LLMs have yet to fully achieve. The author believes that contemporary cognitive science is at a crucial crossroads, where fostering interdisciplinary dialogues among computational linguistics, social linguistics and linguistic anthropology, and cognitive and social psychology is in particular imperative. Such collaboration is vital to bridge the computational, cognitive, and sociocultural aspects of human communication and human−AI interaction, especially in the era of large language and multimodal models and human‐centric Artificial Intelligence (AI). (shrink)

Leading authors in their fields present an interdisciplinary panorama of vital themes of the philosophy of language and track their historical origins. This book gives new life to historical ideas and additional depth to current debates.

This paper focuses on the semiotic foundations of sociolinguistics. Starting from the definition of “sociolinguistics” given by the philosopher Adam Schaff, the paper examines in particular the notion of “critical sociolinguistics” as theorized by the Italian semiotician Ferruccio Rossi-Landi. The basis of the social dimension of language are to be found in what Rossi-Landi calls “social reproduction” which regards both verbal and non-verbal signs. Saussure’s notionof langue can be considered in this way, with reference not only to his Course (...) of General Linguistics, but also to his Harvard Manuscripts.The paper goes on trying also to understand Roland Barthes’s provocative definition of semiology as a part of linguistics (and not vice-versa) as well asdeveloping the notion of communication-production in this perspective. Some articles of Roman Jakobson of the sixties allow us to reflect in a manner which wenow call “socio-semiotic” on the processes of transformation of the “organic” signs into signs of a new type, which articulate the relationship between organicand instrumental. In this sense, socio-linguistics is intended as being sociosemiotics, without prejudice to the fact that the reference area must be human,since semiotics also has the prerogative of referring to the world of non-human vital signs.Socio-linguistics as socio-semiotics assumes the role of a “frontier” science, in the dual sense that it is not only on the border between science of language andthe anthropological and social sciences, but also that it can be constructed in a movement of continual “crossing frontiers” and of “contamination” betweenlanguages and disciplinary environments. (shrink)

What can you say after you say that the world—or at least human life on it—looks like it's nearing its end? How about starting with wonder at the possibility that dialogue and subjectivity—the bases of human language—are possible now? In _Time and Human Language Now_ two lifelong friends share, in the form of a long-distance e-mail correspondence, a conversation about the relation between cosmos and consciousness, and about the possibility of being responsibly open toward the future without either (...) despair or unreasoning hope. The urgency that underlies this dialogue is the conviction that there can only be reason for hope if the members of homo sapiens can learn—soon—how vital and astonishing is the phenomenon of shared human presence through language. (shrink)

This book investigates Chinese comprehension and treatment of the relationship between language and reality. The work examines ancient Chinese philosophy through the pair of concepts known as ming-shi. By analyzing the pre-Qin thinkers' discourse on ming and shi, the work explores how Chinese philosophers dealt with issues not only in language but also in ontology, epistemology, ethics, axiology, and logic. Through this discourse analysis, readers are invited to rethink the relationship of language to thought and behavior. The (...) author criticizes and corrects vital misunderstandings of Chinese culture and highlights the anti-dualism and pragmatic character of Chinese thoughts. The rich meaning of the ming-shi pair is displayed by revealing its connection to other philosophical issues. The chapters show how discourse on language and reality shapes a central characteristic of Chinese culture, the practical zhi. They illuminate the interplay of Chinese theories of language and Dao as Chinese wisdom and worldview. Readers who are familiar with pragmatics and postmodernism will recognize the common points in ancient Chinese philosophy and contemporary Western philosophy, as they emerge through these chapters. The work will particularly appeal to scholars of philosophy, philosophy of language, communication studies and linguistics. (shrink)

«Hermeneutic» means interpretation, that is, looking from a point of view. In this study we try to interpret from the vital reason, the method of Ortega y Gasset, his and his disciple Julián Marías, the Aristotelian concept of «substance». If life is the radical reality, as Ortega stresses, and the person its programmatic realization, in Marías’ opinion, a vital reason of the concept of οὐσία, means to discover its capacity to understand human life. We will find, as a matter of (...) fact, that there are four limits, essentially, that distance the philosopher from that comprehension. By them, we will find the core of the greatest contradictions of the Aristotelian thought, that has been subject to intense critics throughout its history. We will concern, especially, on the function of language in the Greek conception of reason, on the interpretations that brought to «being» and «entity» as Aristotle’s thought starting point «Hermenéutica» significa interpretar, mirar desde un punto de vista. En este estudio buscamos interpretar desde la «razón vital», el método de Ortega y Gasset y su discípulo Julián Marías, el concepto aristotélico de «sustancia». Si la vida es la realidad radical, como afirma Ortega, y la persona es su realización programática, según entiende Marías, una razón vital de la οὐσία significa descubrir su capacidad de comprensión para con la vida humana. Encontraremos, entonces, que hay esencialmente cuatro límites que desvían de esa comprensión; mediante ellos, habremos encontrado el núcleo de importantes contradicciones del pensamiento aristotélico que han sido objeto de encendidos debates a lo largo de la historia. Nos centraremos, sobre todo, en la función del lenguaje en la concepción de la razón griega, en los supuestos interpretativos del «ser» y del «ente» como puntos de partida del pensamiento de Aristóteles . (shrink)

The burden of the Christian religion is not primarily that certain attitudes are desirable nor that certain practices are comfortable, but that certain things are true. Certain facts have to be faced, certain claims recognized. Questions of the meaningfulness and truth-status of religious language are thus central to Christian apologetic. However much emphasis we give to the vital link between true belief and action - and for the Bible the two are inseparable - there is no escaping the obligation (...) to enquire into the meaning and truth of Christian affirmations as well as their personal or social effectiveness. (shrink)

This reader collects and introduces important work in linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, and computational linguistics on the use of linguistic devices in natural languages to situate events in time: whether they are past, present, or future; whether they are real or hypothetical; when an event might have occurred, and how long it could have lasted. In focussing on the treatment and retrieval of time-based information it seeks to lay the foundation for temporally-aware natural language computer processing systems, for (...) example those that process documents on the worldwide web to answer questions or produce summaries. The development of such systems requires the application of technical knowledge from many different disciplines. The book is the first to bring these disciplines together, by means of classic and contemporary papers in four areas: tense, aspect, and event structure; temporal reasoning; the temporal structure of natural language discourse; and temporal annotation. Clear, self-contained editorial introductions to each area provide the necessary technical background for the non-specialist, explaining the underlying connections across disciplines.A wide range of students and professionals in academia and industry will value this book as an introduction and guide to a new and vital technology. The former include researchers, students, and teachers of natural language processing, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, computer science, information retrieval, library sciences, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science. Those in industry include corporate managers and researchers, software product developers, and engineers in information-intensive companies, such as on-line database and web-service providers. (shrink)

: It is an assertion routinely made that the rise of Chan represents a new stage in the development of Chinese Buddhism. But there can be no philosophical breakthrough without the discovery of new conceptual tools or perspectives. The histories and philosophical meanings of three language-related Chan methods are explored here; it is shown that not only are the methods vital to our understanding of Chan Buddhism but also they explain why Chan is so different from anything Chinese philosophy (...) had seen up until the rise of Chan. (shrink)

Will language as we know it cease to exist? What could this mean for the way we live our lives? Shining a light on the technology currently being developed to revolutionise communication, The Future of Language distinguishes myth from reality and superstition from scientifically-based prediction as it plots out the importance of language and raises questions about its future.From the rise of artificial intelligence and speaking robots, to brain implants and computer-facilitated telepathy, language and communications expert (...) Philip Seargeant surveys the development of new digital 'languages', such as emojis, animated gifs and memes, and investigates how conventions of spoken and written language are being modified by new trends in communication. From George Orwell's fictional predictions in Nineteen Eighty-Four to the very real warnings of climate activist Greta Thunberg, Seargeant explores language through time, traversing politics, religion, philosophy, literature, and of course technology, in the process. Tracing how previous eras have imagined the future of language, from the Bible to the works H. G. Wells, and from Star Wars to Star Trek, the book reveals how perfecting language and communication has always been a vital component of utopian dreams of the future. Questioning the potential ramifications of recent and future developments in communication on society and its ideals, The Future of Language is a no holds barred investigation into the state of civilisation and the impact that changes in language could have on our lives"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

This is the first work to combine an introduction to Augustine's _Confessions_ with a larger outline of his mature theology. Mallard provides guidance for reading the narrative _Confessions_ and at the same time, by certain extensions and comments, reveals the three major topical divisions within Augustine's thought: creation, salvation, and the City of God. Mallard is able to do this because Augustine's affirmation of the good of Creation, his view of the human will and God's grace, his sense of a (...) religious people's identity and their hope, and his view of faith and reason were all essentially in place at the time of the _Confessions_. Mallard argues that Augustine was not "in search of himself" in a modern sense but in search of a language of prayer, praise, and truth that would locate him within God's grace. That language turned out to be the language of Incarnation, which remains compelling and inviting today. As a classic work, the _Confessions_ is a monument to its own time, but it has striking resonances for our own. Mallard's interpretation will challenge readers to begin working out their own. The _Confessions_ endures because it is a story that illumines the stories of many, even to the present day. To analyze how it is like, and unlike, modern experiences is to exercise both mind and heart. In that respect, _Language and Love_ is a kind of theological meditation on the Confessions testing out a horizon of belief. Mallard views Augustine as a master of the spoken word in an age of broken and abused language and the _Confessions_ as a historic masterpiece of rhetoric. He contends that Augustine is the ancestor of many today who offer social and political hope through fresh rhetorical vitality. (shrink)

If the important role of written translation in the construction and contestation of knowledge and narratives remains largely under-explored, then the part played by interpreting and interpreters is even less examined in knowledge construction and story-telling. At a time when Beijing increasingly seeks to bolster its discursive power and have the Chinese story properly told, the interpreter-mediated and televised Premier-Meets-the-Press conferences constitute a typical discursive event andregime of truthin articulating China’s officially sanctioned “voice.” Discursive in nature, the institutionalised event permits (...) Beijing to construct a desired version of truth, fact and narrative in front of the more vociferous and dominant West. As an attempt to employ digital humanities (DH) methods to real-world language use, this corpus-based CDA study explores the press conference interpreters’ agency and mediation in rendering key concepts and discourses (e.g., ECONOMY and REFORM) constitutive of the broader Reform and Opening-up meta-narrative, which legitimises China’s political and economic systems, developments, policies and positions in the post-1978 era. The interpreters are found to maintain and often further reinforce Beijing’s discourse in English at various levels. Apart from indicating issues of institutional alignment, this study points to interpreters’ agency in communicating beyond national borders, (re)constructing political and institutional knowledge, counterbalancing the naturalised and taken-for-granted Western narratives, and contributing to the shifting East-West power differentials discursively. This study highlights the significance of interpreters as indispensable (re)tellers of the Chinese story in an increasingly mediat(is)ed world, where the interpreted discourse is routinely quotedverbatimon various platforms and taken for granted as the correct version of Beijing’s official “voice.”. (shrink)

En este artículo describiremos la vitalidad del sistema fonológico del mapudungun hablado por escolares pewenches de la Provincia del Biobío, VIII Región. Específicamente, nos hemos propuesto: a) Determinar los fonos/fonemas, y su fonotaxis, que se relevan como indicadores de vitalidad, b) Identificar las transferencias fonético-fonológicas presentes en la fonología del pewenche hablado por estos escolares y c) Interpretar las transferencias encontradas en términos del grado de vitalidad de la fonología de la lengua. La muestra está conformada por un grupo de (...) 20 escolares bilingües de entre 12 y 15 años de edad, que se encuentran cursando 7° y 8° año básico en escuelas rurales pertenecientes a dos comunidades pewenches del valle del Queuco, en la comuna de Alto Biobío. Para la recolección del material fonológico, se aplicó a los participantes una lista léxica de 65 ítems, material que se complementó con la narración oral en mapudungun de un cuento. Según nuestros datos, hemos podido constatar la existencia de una serie de rasgos fónicos en el mapudungun hablado por los escolares pewenches que obedece a la influencia de las estructuras fonológicas del castellano. Sin embargo, el grado y la difusión de los fenómenos de transferencia se desarrollan de manera heterogénea en ambas comunidades en estudio, debido, entre otros factores, a la intensidad del contacto. In this article we will describe the vitality of the phonological system Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren from the Biobío province, VIII Region. We intend: a) To determine the phones/phonemes, and their phonotactics, which are revealed as vitality markers. b) To identify the phonetic-phonological transferences which are present in the Pewenche spoken by these schoolchildren, and, c) To interpret the transferences found in terms of the degree of the language phonological vitality. The sample is composed of 20 bilingual schoolchildren from 12 to 15 years old, who are in 7th and 8th grade in rural primary schools belonging to two Pehuenche comunities from Valle del Queuco, in the city of Alto Biobío. To collect the phonological material, we applied a 64-item lexical list, which was complemented with the oral narration of a tale in Mapudungun. According to our data, we have been able to verify the existence of a series of phonic features in the Mapudungun spoken by Pewenche schoolchildren, which originate because of the influence of the Spanish phonological structure. However, the degree and spread of the transference phenomena develop in a heterogeneous way in both of the studied communities. due to the contact intensity, among other possible factors. (shrink)

This book provides the first English translations of pivotal essays and debates on the role of language politics, linguistics, and translation in Antonio Gramsci's influential cultural theory. It also includes new works from leading and up-and-coming anglophone scholars to create a vital resource for a wide variety of readers interested in Gramsci across many disciplines including cultural studies, critical political economy, social and political theory, literature, sociology, post-colonialism, and philosophy.

Africa, along with Asia, is the continent with the highest number of ‘living’ indigenous languages. European languages, mainly English, French and Portuguese, have spread throughout all African nations during the last 200 years; however, until today, the use of these ‘foreign’ languages has been mostly restricted to certain domains, such as higher education, politics and business, and also to a relatively small number of people. According to Scotton (1982: 68) only 10 per cent or less of the rural African population (...) have a considerable competence in the imported languages, even though these are in many instances the official languages of their home countries. African vernaculars are generally not in danger of being replaced by European languages. However, we observe a diminishing use of African vernaculars, not only in an increasing number of domains, but also with regard to the absolute number of indigenous languages; that means, in short, that linguistic vitality and variety on the African continent is decreasing. (shrink)

In _Roman Jakobson_ Richard Bradford reasserts the value of Jakobson's work, arguing that he has a great deal to offer contemporary critical theory and providing a critical appraisal the sweep of Jakobson's career. Bradford re-establishes Jakobson's work as vital to our understanding of the relationship between language and poetry. By exploring Jakobson's thesis that poetry is the primary object language, _Roman Jakobson: Life, Language, Art_ offers a new reading of his work which includes the most radical elements (...) of modernism. This book will be invaluable to students of Jakobson and to anyone interested in the development of critical theory, linguistics and stylistics. (shrink)

In Roman Jakobson Richard Bradford reasserts the value of Jakobson's work, arguing that he has a great deal to offer contemporary critical theory and providing a critical appraisal the sweep of Jakobson's career. Bradford re-establishes Jakobson's work as vital to our understanding of the relationship between language and poetry. By exploring Jakobson's thesis that poetry is the primary object language, Roman Jakobson: Life, Language, Art offers a new reading of his work which includes the most radical elements (...) of modernism. This book will be invaluable to students of Jakobson and to anyone interested in the development of critical theory, linguistics and stylistics. (shrink)

What do ‘meaning’ and ‘truth’ mean? And how are they situated in the concrete practices of linguistic communication? What is the relationship between words and the world? How—with words—can people do such varied things as marry, inaugurate a president, and declare a country’s independence? How is language able to express knowledge, belief, and other mental states? What are metaphors and how do they work? Is a mathematically rigorous account of language possible? Does language make women invisible and (...) encode a male worldview? These are the kind of questions that have been addressed by philosophers of language since ancient times. Interest in the subject stretches back to the beginnings of western philosophy . Interest in the philosophy of language has also been enduring—and has blossomed anew in the past century. This new title in the Routledge series, Critical Concepts in Philosophy, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by A. P. Martinich, one of the subdiscipline’s leading scholars, this collection brings together in four volumes the canonical and the very best cutting-edge scholarship in the field to provide a synoptic view of all the key issues, figures, concepts, and current debates. With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editor, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Philosophy of Language is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by philosophers and linguists—as well as psychologists and cognitive scientists working on language—as a vital research resource. (shrink)

W. H. Auden, the sometimes Greta Garbo of twentieth-century poetry, once told Stephen Spender that he liked America better than England because in America one could be alone. Further, in his introduction to The Criterion Book of Modern American Verse Auden remarked that while in England poets are considered members of a “clerkly caste,” in America they are an “aristocracy of one.” Certainly it does seem to be the individual poet—Whitman, Williams, Olson, Plath, O’Hara, Ginsberg—who has altered the landscape of (...) American poetry and prosody, not the group. And most American literary “movements,” as Robert Creeley has pointed out, are simply comprised of a few people who on occasion drink together, and who are as likely as not to end the evening in violent argument over an aesthetic or political point. Yet the notion of schools or movements remains, in mainstream historical criticism at least, a vital one. How many introductions to anthologies of American poetry, for example, continue to use such rubrics as the Transcendentals, the Populists, the Black Mountain poets, the Beats, the New York group? And while established poets often rebel from any sense that they are part of a larger community, which by definition is self-limiting, they are often complicit in their initial categorization. For poets as well as critics the idea of a school is often a useful fiction serving as both a kind of protective hothouse and a platform for getting a hearing.The most recent “group” of American poets—the first since the anthology wars of the early sixties really to be of more than passing interest and perhaps to be actually capable of bringing about a major shift of attention in American poetry and poetics—is the so-called “Language” school. Individual volumes by poets often considered part of this group number well into three figures now and there have been important journals and anthologies produced in a serious and sustained fashion by these writers. Yet in part because of what seems the essentially hermetic character of the project , there has been little notice of this activity by academic critics or reviewers.1 What I’d like to do here is briefly map a few major aspects of the territory, describing some of the practical and theoretical questions which seem to occupy many of these writers in their ongoing critique of the “workshop poem.” 1. Two important exceptions are discussions of some of this work in Stephen Fredman, Poet’s Prose: The Crisis in American Verse and Marjorie Perloff’s review “The Word as Such: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry in the Eighties,” American Poetry Review 13 : 15-22. All further references to Perloff’s article, abbreviated “WS,” will be included in the text. For a discussion of the various Language poetry journals and anthologies, see my chapter “American Poetry, 1940s to the Present” in American Literary Scholarship: An Annual/1983, ed. Warren French , pp. 349-74. Lee Bartlett, an associate professor of English, has directed the University of New Mexico’s creative writing program for five years. Coeditor of the critical journal American Poetry, his Talking Poetry: Conversations in the Workshop with Contemporary Poets will be published this fall. Currently he is writing a biography of William Everson. (shrink)

Semiotics embraces linguistics, philosophy, and literary studies, as well as linking to anthropology, art, psychology, and biology. This new Routledge collection helps to make sense of the subject’s huge interdisciplinary corpus of scholarly literature and brings together the best and most influential materials from ‘the first phase’, neo-classics from the institutionalization of semiotics in the 1960s, and contemporary works illustrating the ongoing development of semiotics and its widening applications. Volume I collects pre-modern material showing the genesis of semiotics from Locke (...) to Peirce, along with a range of work from the last thirty years. Volume II includes key work from recent developments in cognitive linguistics and cognitive semantics, while Volume III focuses on ‘Text and Image’. Finally, Volume IV gathers the best offerings from other disciplines, and from emerging fields such as ‘biosemiotics’. Fully indexed, and with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, that places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, this is an essential work destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital one-stop reference resource. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience by Bethany HenningPentti MäättänenBethany Henning Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience London: Lexington Books, 2022. 182 pp. incl. indexBethany Henning examines Dewey's conception of aesthetic experience by looking for connections to several trends and traditions. Henning relates pragmatism to Freudian psychoanalysis, feminism, wisdom from esoteric sources, erotic drive, and religion. "In the American thought (...) that we have surveyed thus far, the aesthetic, the religious, and the ethical stand as completions and realizations of one another" (p. 25). This variety of viewpoints is no doubt interesting and potentially fruitful, but there is a danger that the result may remain somewhat sporadic.One of the traditional problems and tasks in philosophy is to explain how the world is experienced as an organized, bounded whole. How are the various sensations and ideas of them related to each other? On what ground can we experience these relations between ideas? Henning refers to William James and says that these relations are directly experienced, we feel them (p. 46). According to Henning there is a unique force responsible for this, and it "can only be a kind of noncognitive, preverbal awareness, and for Dewey, it can only be the qualitative immediacy that is known to us only in aesthetic experience" (p. 25). How can we experience these relations? Here Henning appeals to Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) who provided his own view of habits, which account for "the relations between ideas by relating them through their spatiotemporal contiguity, causality, or through resemblances" (p. 21; italics in the original). This is how the American mind was firmly set on a theoretical path that distinguishes it from "the European conception" (ibid.).This is a surprising claim, indeed. Here is what David Hume has to say about the connexion or association of ideas: "The qualities, from [End Page 369] which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner convey'd from one idea to another, are three, viz. RESEMBLANCE, CONTIGUITY in time or place, and CAUSE and EFFECT."1 It is quite inconceivable how this simple relabeling of Hume's principles of association as habits might have any effect on any theoretical path, especially on the emergence of pragmatism. Edwards wrote decades before Charles Peirce entered the scene. Edwards' habit is just a new name for old European ideas. It is obvious that Hume's principles of association, which deal with internal mental processes, have not much to do with Peircean habits of action, which are about overt bodily action in the world where we meet also hard facts involving brute force, muscular effort, and resistance.The starting point of Henning's analysis is immediate qualitative experience, affective sensual awareness, which also prefigures and is the ground of signification (p. 107). Qualitative immediacy is felt, had, and undergone. There is a need to experience the world as meaningful, to move from that world as had and undergone to the world as known. Knowledge about this immediate experience becomes possible with the emergence of mind, when "situations, in their qualitative tone, are also socially significant so that interactions are aided by the mediation of symbols" (p. 88). We can give names to qualitatively different feelings. This knowledge is different from qualitative immediacy in that it is discursive, cognitive, and syntactical (p. 38). But how does this kind of knowledge emerge? What is the origin of names and symbols? What is the notion of meaning applied here? According to Henning, meaning "must be felt, had and undergone, in a way that is primarily qualitative rather than primarily cognitive" (p. 107). There is also "erotic need for meaningful connection" (p. 113). Further, Henning appeals to Julia Kristeva's semiotic theory, but Peirce's semiotics is not mentioned. An explicit definition of meaning would be in place here, especially as Peirce and Dewey have one to offer.According to Peirce, "what a thing means is simply what habits it involves" (CP 5.400).2 Note that there are no restrictions on this. If it is a linguistic expression, then we have Ludwig Wittgenstein's language games... (shrink)

In the traditional African view, words and sentences are not viewed as being liable to objective reflective truth/falsehood-judgments. It is not a person-word-reality-view, but a person-word-person-view: the sender's words are units of orally produced energy that have the power to improve or degenerate the receiver's vitality. Words received can make you more powerful by increasing your confidence and your control over your environment. But they can equally well harm (parts of) you, by discouraging you in certain endeavors. From the (...) traditional African point of view, words are not logical, but physical phenomena: words are forces affecting power. (shrink)