The Aesthetics Of Grammar

This book provides a detailed comparative overview of an array of elaborate grammatical resources used in Southeast Asian languages.

The languages of mainland Southeast Asia evidence an impressive array of elaborate grammatical resources, such as echo words, phonaesthetic words, chameleon affixes, chiming derivatives, onomatopoeic forms, ideophones and expressives. Speakers of these languages fashion grammatical works of art in order to express and convey emotions, senses, conditions and perceptions that enrich discourse. This book provides a detailed comparative overview of the mechanisms by which aesthetic qualities of speech operate as part of speakers' grammatical knowledge. Each chapter focuses on a different language and explores the grammatical information of a number of well- and lesser-known languages from mainland Southeast Asia. It will be of great interest to syntacticians, morphologists, linguistic anthropologists, language typologists, cognitive scientists interested in language, and instructors of Southeast Asian languages.

Shape grammars provide a means for the recursive specification of shapes. The formalism for shape grammars is designed to be easily usable and understandable by people and at the same time to be adaptable for use in computer programs. Shape grammars are similar to phrase structura grammars, which were developed by Chomsky [ 1956, 1957]. Where a phrase structura grammar is defined over an alphabet of symbols and generates a language of sequences of symbols, a shape grammar is defined over an alphabet of shapes and generates a language of shapes. This dissertation explores the uses of shape grammars. The dissertation is divided into three sections and an appendix. In the first section: Shape grammars are defined. Some simple examples are given for instructiva purposes. Shape grammars are used to generate a new class of reversible figures. Shape grammars are given for some well-known mathematical curves (the Snowflake curve, a variation of Peano's curve, and Hilbert's curve). To show the general computational power of shape grammars, a procedura that given any Turing machine constructs a shape grammar that simulates the operation of that Turing machine is presented. Related work on various formalisms for pictura grammars is described. A symbolic characterization of shape grammars is given that is useful for implementing shape grammars in computer programs.

Although universally recognised as one of the greatest of modern philosophers, Wittgenstein's work in aesthetics has been unjustly neglected. This is the first book exclusively devoted to Wittgenstein's aesthetics, exploring the themes developed by Wittgenstein in his own writing on aesthetics as well as the implications of Wittgenstein's wider philosophical views for understanding central issues in aesthetics. Drawing together original contributions from leading international scholars, this book will be an important addition to studies of Wittgenstein's thought, but its discussion of issues in literature, music and performing art, and criticism will also be of interest to many students of literary and cultural studies. Exploring three key themes - the capacity of the arts to illuminate our lives; the nature of the particular responses involved in understanding and appreciating works of art; the role of theory and principle in artistic and critical practice - the contributors address issues raised by contemporary philosophers of art, and seek to make connections between Wittgenstein's work and that of other significant philosophies of art in the Western tradition. Displaying the best practice of modern philosophical writing - clarity, cogency, respect for but not blind obedience to common sense, argument illustrated with detailed examples, rejection of speculation and pretension - this book demonstrates how philosophy can make a valuable contribution to understanding the arts.

This volume brings together essays from distinguished scholars in a variety of disciplines - philosophy, history, literary studies, art history - to explore various ways in which aesthetics, politics and the arts interact with one another. Politics is an elastic concept, covering an oceanic breadth of mechanisms for conducting relations between empowered groups, and these essays offer a range of perspectives, including nations, classes, and gendered subjects, which examine the imbrication of politics with arts. Together they demonstrate the need to counteract the reductionist view of the relationship between politics and the arts which prevails in different ways in both philosophy and critical theory, and suggest that the irreducibility of the aesthetic must prompt us to reconceive the political as it relates to human cultural activity.

Toward a Structural Psychology of Cinema Approaches to Semiotics [AS].

Shape grammar and space syntax have been separately developed but rarely combined in any significant way. The first of these is typically used to investigate or generate the formal or geometric properties of architecture, while the second is used to analyze the spatial, topological, or social properties of architecture. Despite the reciprocal relationship between form and space in architecture—it is difficult to conceptualize a completed building without a sense of both of these properties—the two major computational theories have been largely developed and applied in isolation from each another. Grammatical and Syntactical Approaches in Architecture: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical scholarly resource that explores the relationship between shape grammar and space syntax for urban planning and architecture and enables the creative discovery of both the formal and spatial features of an architectural style or type. This book, furthermore, presents a new method to selectively capture aspects of both the grammar and syntax of architecture. Featuring a range of topics such as mathematical analysis, spatial configuration, and domestic architecture, this book is essential for architects, policymakers, urban planners, researchers, academicians, and students.