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Probabilistic Linguistics by Rens Bod, Jennifer Hay, Stefanie Jannedy (Paperback, 2003)

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Since the 1960s, linguistics has been dominated by the idea that language is categorical and linguistic competence discrete. It has become increasingly clear, however, that many levels of representation, from phonemes to sentence structure, show probabilistic properties, as does the language faculty. Probabilistic linguistics conceptualizes categories as distributions and views knowledge of language not as a minimal set of categorical constraints but as a set of gradient rules that may be characterized by a statistical distribution. Whereas categorical approaches focus on the endpoints of distributions of linguistic phenomena, probabilistic approaches focus on the gradient middle ground. Probabilistic linguistics integrates all the progress made by linguistics thus far with a probabilistic perspective. This book presents a comprehensive introduction to probabilistic approaches to linguistic inquiry. It covers the application of probabilistic techniques to phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, language acquisition, psycholinguistics, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics. It also includes a tutorial on elementary probability theory and probabilistic grammars.

Product Identifiers

PublisherMIT Press Ltd
ISBN-139780262523387
eBay Product ID (ePID)94982248

Product Key Features

Book TitleProbabilistic Linguistics
AuthorRens Bod, Jennifer Hay, Stefanie Jannedy
FormatPaperback
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2003
Number of Pages464 Pages

Additional Product Features

Country/Region of ManufactureUnited States
EditorStefanie Jannedy, Jennifer Hay, Rens Bod