The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature By Steven Pinker

2015 Reprint of 1957 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. American linguist Paul Postal wrote in 1964 that most of the "syntactic conceptions prevalent in the United States" were "versions of the theory of phrase structure grammars in the sense of Chomsky". British linguist John Lyons wrote in 1966 that "no work has had a greater influence upon the current linguistic theory than Chomsky's Syntactic Structures." Prominent historian of linguistics R. H. Robins wrote in 1967 that the publication of Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" was "probably the most radical and important change in direction in descriptive linguistics and in linguistic theory that has taken place in recent years". Another historian of linguistics Frederick Newmeyer considers "Syntactic Structures" "revolutionary" for two reasons. Firstly, it showed that a formal yet non-empiricist theory of language was possible and more importantly, it demonstrated this possibility in a practical sense by formally treating a fragment of English grammar. Secondly, it put syntax at the center of the theory of language. Syntax was recognized as the focal point of language production, in which a finite set of rules can produce an infinite number of sentences. As a result, morphology and phonology were relegated in importance. "Syntactic Structures" also initiated an interdisciplinary dialog between philosophers of language and linguists. American philosopher John Searle wrote that "Chomsky's work is one of the most remarkable intellectual achievements of the present era, comparable in scope and coherence to the work of Keynes or Freud. It has done more than simply produce a revolution in linguistics; it has created a new discipline of generative grammar and is having a revolutionary effect on two other subjects, philosophy and psychology". With its formal and logical treatment of language, Syntactic Structures also brought linguistics and the new field of computer science closer together.

No detailed description available for "Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals".

2022 Reprint of the 1952 First Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Modern psychology is able to give new impetus to the study of language and understanding. The psychoanalyst, especially, has many opportunities each day to study the manifold ways of human expression and need for contact. This book is based on twenty-five years of such experience in a daily "word laboratory." The author combines linguistic, psychoanalytic, and social-psychological concepts to investigate the various tools which man uses in his search for mutual understanding. Specific topics of discussion include emotional expressions, gesture language, picture language, telepathy, organ language, sound language, baby language, word magic and symbolism; the riddle of semantics and the manifold functions of the word; the perversions of communication; the role of unconscious communication; the art of silence and listening; the various misuse of the tools of communication; and the different patterns of conversation. In applying the "multiple-tool" approach to the many-faceted problem of communication, the author, a psychiatrist, psychologist, and well-known writer, makes a valuable contribution to the enhancement of mutual understanding.

This volume is one in a series of monographs being issued under the general title of "Disorders of Human Communication". Each monograph deals in detail with a particular aspect of vocal communication and its disorders, and is written by internationally distinguished experts. Therefore, the series will provide an authoritative source of up-to-date scientific and clinical informa tion relating to the whole field of normal and abnormal speech communication, and as such will succeed the earlier monumental work "Handbuch der Stimm und Sprachheilkunde" by R. Luchsinger and G. E. Arnold (last issued in 1970). This series will prove invaluable for clinicians, teachers and research workers in phoniatrics and logopaedics, phonetics and linguistics, speech pathology, otolaryngology, neurology and neurosurgery, psychology and psychiatry, paediatrics and audiology. Several of the monographs will also be useful to voice and singing teachers, and to their pupils. G. E. Arnold, Jackson, Miss. F. Winckel, Berlin B. D. Wyke, London Preface This book tries to illustrate the practice as well as the principles involved in applying linguistics to the analysis of language disability. In writing it, I have as sumed an audience of professional speech and hearing clinicians who have had little or no formal training in linguistics. Each Chapter therefore begins with a resu me of the main theoretical and descriptive principles needed in order to carry out a clinical linguistic analysis. The relevance oflanguage acquisition studies is a major theme within this resume.

In this important study Ernst Cassirer analyzes the non-rational thought processes that go to make up culture. He demonstrates that beneath both language and myth there lies an unconscious "grammar" of experience, whose categories and canons are not those of logical thought. He shows that this prelogical "logic" is not merely an undeveloped state of rationality, but something basically different, and that this archaic mode of thought still has enormous power over even our most rigorous thought, in language, poetry and myth. The author analyzes brilliantly such seemingly diverse (yet related) phenomena as the metaphysics of the Bhagavat Gita, the Melanesian concept of Mana, the Naturphilosophie of Schelling, modern poetry, Ancient Egyptian religion, and symbolic logic. He covers a vast range of material that is all too often neglected in studies of human thought. These six essays are of great interest to the student of philosophy or the philosophy of science, the historian, or the anthropologist. They are also remarkably timely for students of literature, what with the enormous emphasis placed upon "myth" in modern literary speculation. This book is not superficial speculation by a dabbler, but a penetrating study by one of the most profound and sensitive philosophic minds of our time.

No detailed description available for "From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences".

In this stimulating study, the author explores how Conrad, T.S.Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, Huxley and others responded to the immediate challenges of their time, to the implications of Freudian psychology, molecular theory, relativist theory, and the general weakening of religious faith. Assuming that artists and writers, in coping with those problems, would develop techniques in many ways comparable, even where there was no direct contact, he positions Modernist literature within the context of contemporary painting, architecture and sculpture, thereby providing some fascinating insights into the nature of the literary works themselves.

First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.