Language As A Scientific Tool

Language is the most essential medium of scientific activity. Many historians, sociologists and science studies scholars have investigated scientific language for this reason, but only few have examined those cases where language itself has become an object of scientific discussion. Over the centuries scientists have sought to control, refine and engineer language for various epistemological, communicative and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language have bubbled to the surface in scientific discourse. This opens a window into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural contexts and places, and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of national languages and the development of science within national settings, and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understudied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval Hebrew science.

Language is the most essential medium of scientific activity. Many historians, sociologists and science studies scholars have investigated scientific language for this reason, but only few have examined those cases where language itself has become an object of scientific discussion. Over the centuries scientists have sought to control, refine and engineer language for various epistemological, communicative and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language have bubbled to the surface in scientific discourse. This opens a window into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural contexts and places, and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of national languages and the development of science within national settings, and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understudied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval Hebrew science.

Dragan Djurić looks at strategy tools from a process-ontological worldview as proposed by the Process Organization Studies discourse. Building on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy he understands science and management as language games thereby developing a view of strategy tools as objects with both an ontological and a symbolic function. This perspective is contrasted with the traditional understanding of strategy tools as ‘technologies of rationality’ as well as with the practice-based view of strategy tools as ‘boundary objects’.

A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain—as most linguists do—but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide. For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. For example, the Amazonian Pirahã put words together in ways that violate our long-held under-standing of how language works, and Pirahã grammar expresses complex ideas very differently than English grammar does. Drawing on the Wari’ language of Brazil, Everett explains that speakers of all languages, in constructing their stories, omit things that all members of the culture understand. In addition, Everett discusses how some cultures can get by without words for numbers or counting, without verbs for “to say” or “to give,” illustrating how the very nature of what’s important in a language is culturally determined. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.

Looks at how humans have evolved complex behaviours such as language and culture.

As technology continues to become more sophisticated, a computer’s ability to understand, interpret, and manipulate natural language is also accelerating. Persistent research in the field of natural language processing enables an understanding of the world around us, in addition to opportunities for manmade computing to mirror natural language processes that have existed for centuries. Natural Language Processing: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source on the latest concepts, processes, and techniques for communication between computers and humans. Highlighting a range of topics such as machine learning, computational linguistics, and semantic analysis, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for computer engineers, computer and software developers, IT professionals, academicians, researchers, and upper-level students seeking current research on the latest trends in the field of natural language processing.

Drawing from more than two hundred examples representing twenty-two languages of wide genetic and typological variety, the author guides the reader through a broad collection of situations encountered in the analysis and practice of translation. This enterprise gains structure and rigor from the methods and findings of contemporary linguistic theory, while realism and relevance are served by the choice of "naturalistic" examples from published translations. Coverage draws from a variety of genres and text-types (literary works, the Bible, newspaper articles, legal and philosophical writings, for examples), and addresses a thorough selection of structural-functional aspects. These range from discrepancies between source and target languages in sentence construction, to dfiferences between source and target poetic traditions with respect to meter and rhyme.

A study of English semantics during the Enlightenment. New words 1650–1800 reflect the new middle-class culture of sociability, commerce, and science. Old mostly obsolete words illuminate the realities of working-class life, exhausting labor, dirt, outrageous sexism, magic, horses, bizarre food.