IN OCTOBER 1966 A SEMINAR WAS HELD IN BETHESDA, MARYLAND ON THE USE OF COMPUTERS IN LANGUAGE RESEARCH. THE ORGANIZERS OF THE CONFERENCE, THE CENTER FOR APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH, ATTEMPTED TO BRING TOGETHER EMINENT REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MAJOR SCHOOLS OF CURRENT LINGUISTIC RESEARCH. THE PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE…

WORDS CAN BE STUDIED BY DESCRIBING THEIR ORIGIN INDUCTIVELY OR DEDUCTIVELY. EITHER WAY, A PRECISE DEFINITION OF ETYMOLOGICAL CLASSES WHICH ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE IS NEEDED. PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH IS CLASSIFIED INTO--(1) NATIVE WORDS WHICH CAN BE TRACED BACK TO THE WORD STOCK OF OLD ENGLISH, (2) LOAN WORDS NEW TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WHICH HAD…

A METHOD OF VOCABULARY STUDY USED AS A TOOL RATHER THAN AS A COMPLETE VOCABULARY PROGRAM HELPS STUDENTS INVESTIGATE ANY WORD AND HELPS CLARIFY KEY OR DIFFICULT WORDS IN AN ASSIGNMENT. THE SEMANTIC LEVELS OF DEFINITION-MAKING ARE EXPLAINED AND ILLUSTRATED BY THE TEACHER'S ASKING THE STUDENTS WHAT CLASS OF THINGS A CERTAIN WORD STANDS FOR AND HOW…

IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES THE TECHNIQUE OF COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS (TAKEN FROM THE FIELD OF FORMAL SEMANTICS) IS APPLIED TO A SET OF TERMS WHICH FORM A CULTURALLY RELEVANT DOMAIN. THIS METHOD PROCEEDS BY RECOGNIZING SEMANTIC DISTINCTIONS (COMPONENTS) WHICH APPORTION THE TERMS OF THE SET INTO CONTRASTING SUB-SETS SUCH THAT EVERY ITEM IS…

The meaning of children's lexical innovations is distinguished from the forms they rely on to convey meaning. Children require knowledge of the context in order to judge how the meaning of their innovation can be conveyed to the addressee. This contextualization is often achieved by default, since children tend to limit their early conversations…

This paper outlines an approach to the study of internal state words and their use in conversation. The first section of the paper deals with the basic categories of words involved, discussing and illustrating theoretical and practical problems in defining critical components and boundaries for the class of internal state words as a whole and then…

This experiment tested the hypothesis that cognitive change resulting from information inputs can be represented as linear motion of concepts in multidimensional space. The theoretical background is reviewed and the mathematical derivation of the hypothesis is given. A set of fifteen nations was scaled by 64 undergraduate and graduate students in…

This paper accepts Labov's (1973) criticisms of the categorial approach, i.e., the view that linguistic units are categories which are discrete, invariant, qualitatively distinct, conjunctively defined, and composed of atomic primes, and follows Labov in attempting to develop a non-categorial (or fuzzy-categorial) approach to lexical semantics,…

Two experiments were conducted to ascertain whether the reader uses phonological cues, semantic cues, or both types of cues in identifying letter combinations. Sixty introductory psychology students participated in the first experiment, which tested the differential effects of phonological and semantic cues on the speed with which a verbal unit…

The purpose of the study reported here was to do an automata-theoretical and experimental investigation of the learning of the syntax and semantics of a second natural language. The main thrust of the work was to ask what kind of automaton a person can become. Various kinds of automata were considered, predictions were made from them, and these…

The author's main purposes in this work are "to exhibit linguistic philosophy as an aberration, to show that its practitioners have often done very badly what they claim to be doing, and to advocate the return to the non-linguistic tasks which philosophers had been tackling for 2,500 years." The first half of the volume is concerned with…

A child acquiring a language must learn to correctly match the phenomena of the realworld which he perceives with the lexical items and the segregates and perhaps some of the grammatical categories of the language to be learned. He must correlatively learn the organization in meaning of and among these last named elements, that is, the internal…

This book attempts to bring together semantic theory and description in order to provide the foundation of a unified "semantics of English." Part 1 is thus devoted to semantic theory and Part 2 to the description of some central fields of meaning in English. In Part 1, theory is developed involving two kinds of semantic analysis:…

Resource materials on general semantics--lists of books, audiovisual resources, games, photographs, and films--are arranged under four headings: "Primary and Early Childhood Education,""Intermediate Reading List,""Junior and Senior High School," and "Teachers' Reading List." Introductory material includes reasons for teaching general semantics,…

The author has collected in this volume his papers and talks over the past 20 years on the subject of information theory. He identifies the underlying thread of his work--the idea that there is a valid analogy between Heisenberg's "Principle of Uncertainty" and certain aspects of information theory. Three of his papers then provide introductory…