Standard alphabetical procedures for organizing lexical information put together words that are spelled alike and scatter words with similar or related meanings haphazardly through the list. Unfortunately, there is no obvious alternative, no other simple way for lexicographers to keep track of what has been done or for readers to find the word they are looking for. But a frequent objection to this solution is that finding things on an alphabetical list can be tedious and time-consuming. Many people who would like to refer to a dictionary decide not to bother with it because finding the information would interrupt their work and break their train of thought.

/pdf/introduction-to-wordnet-an-on-line-lexical-database-1cshcej27g.pdf

Introduction to WordNet: An On-line Lexical Database

This book offers a highly accessible introduction to natural language processing, the field that supports a variety of language technologies, from predictive text and email filtering to automatic summarization and translation. With it, you'll learn how to write Python programs that work with large collections of unstructured text. You'll access richly annotated datasets using a comprehensive range of linguistic data structures, and you'll understand the main algorithms for analyzing the content and structure of written communication. Packed with examples and exercises, Natural Language Processing with Python will help you: Extract information from unstructured text, either to guess the topic or identify "named entities" Analyze linguistic structure in text, including parsing and semantic analysis Access popular linguistic databases, including WordNet and treebanks Integrate techniques drawn from fields as diverse as linguistics and artificial intelligence This book will help you gain practical skills in natural language processing using the Python programming language and the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) open source library. If you're interested in developing web applications, analyzing multilingual news sources, or documenting endangered languages -- or if you're simply curious to have a programmer's perspective on how human language works -- you'll find Natural Language Processing with Python both fascinating and immensely useful.

https://www.foo.be/cours/dess-20122013/b/Natural%20Language%20Processing%20with%20Python%20-%20O'Reilly2009.pdf

Natural Language Processing with Python

1 Workshop at which this work was first presented (Utrecht, June 22-24, 1994). For comments on this material, we are grateful to them and the other workshop participants, especially Austin have provided valuable feedback; and the comments, questions, and suggestions from the participants in the (eventually joint) UMass and Rutgers Correspondence Theory seminars were particularly important for the development of this work. For useful discussion of numerous points, we would like to thank

/pdf/faithfulness-and-reduplicative-identity-4ruq4a6e4p.pdf

Faithfulness and reduplicative identity

http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/activities/ieg/e-library/sources/pinker_conn.pdf

On language and connectionism: analysis of a parallel distributed processing model of language acquisition

Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of "universal," we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition. Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills.

/pdf/the-myth-of-language-universals-language-diversity-and-its-i1slauuahf.pdf

The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science

Aronoff integrates an account of morphological structure into a general theory of generative grammar.

Word Formation in Generative Grammar

Most recent research in generative morphology has avoided the treatment of purely morphological phenomena and has focused instead on interface questions, such as the relation between morphology and syntax or between morphology and phonology. In this monograph Mark Aronoff argues that linguists must consider morphology by itself, not merely as an appendage of syntax and phonology, and that linguistic theory must allow for a separate and autonomous morphological component.Following a general introductory chapter, Aronoff examines two narrow classes of morphological phenomena to make his case: stems and inflectional classes. Concentrating first on Latin verb morphology, he argues that morphological stems are neither syntactic nor phonological units. Next,using data from a number of languages, he underscores the traditional point that the inflectional class of a word is not reducible to its syntactic gender. He then explores in detail the phonologically motivated nominal inflectional class system of two languages of Papua New Guinea (Arapeshand Yimas) and the precise nature of the relation between this system and the corresponding gender system. Finally,drawing on a number of Semitic languages, Aronoff argues that the verb classes of these languages are purely inflectional although they are partly motivated by derivational and syntactic considerations. Mark Aronoff is Professor of Linguistics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes

Preface to the UK second edition Acknowledgements List of technical abbreviations Chapter 1: Language: A Preview Chapter 2: Phonetics: The Sounds of Language Chapter 3: Phonology: The Function and Patterning of Sounds Chapter 4: Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure Chapter 5: Syntax: The Analysis of Sentence Structure Chapter 6: Semantics: The Analysis of Meaning Chapter 7: Cognitive Grammar Chapter 8: Historical Linguistics: The Study of Language Change Chapter 9: The Classification of Languages Chapter 10: First Language Acquisition Chapter 11: Second Language Acquisition Chapter 12: Psycholinguistics: The Study of Language Processing Chapter 13: Brain and Language Chapter 14: Language in Social Contexts Chapter 15: Writing and Language Chapter 16: Animal Communication Chapter 17: Computational Linguistics Glossary Sources Language Index Index

Contemporary linguistics: An introduction

This report contains a linguistic description of a language created spontaneously without any apparent external influence in a stable existing community. We describe the syntactic structure of Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, a language that has arisen in the last 70 years in an isolated endogamous community with a high incidence of nonsyndromic, genetically recessive, profound prelingual neurosensory deafness. In the space of one generation from its inception, systematic grammatical structure has emerged in the language. Going beyond a conventionalized list of words for actions, objects, people, characteristics, and so on, a systematic way of marking the grammatical relations among those elements has appeared in the form of highly regular word order. These systematic structures cannot be attributed to influence from other languages, because the particular word orders that appear in Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language differ from those found both in the ambient spoken languages in the community and in the other sign language found predominantly in the surrounding area. Therefore, the emerging grammatical structures should be regarded as an independent development within the language.

/pdf/the-emergence-of-grammar-systematic-structure-in-a-new-2lsgxbs7tp.pdf

The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new language

Sign languages have two strikingly different kinds of morphological structure: sequential and
simultaneous The simultaneous morphology of two unrelated sign languages, American and
Israeli Sign Language, is very similar and is largely inflectional, while what little sequential
morphology we have found differs significantly and is derivational We show that at least two
pervasive types of inflectional morphology, verb agreement and classifier constructions, are iconically
grounded in spatiotemporal cognition, while the sequential patterns can be traced to normal
historical development We attribute the paucity of sequential morphology in sign languages to
their youth This research both brings sign languages much closer to spoken languages in their
morphological structure and shows how the medium of communication contributes to the structure
of languages

http://sandlersignlab.haifa.ac.il/html/html_eng/pdf/AMS%20Language.pdf

Mark Aronoff

Papers

Word Formation in Generative Grammar

Morphology by Itself: Stems and Inflectional Classes

Contemporary linguistics: An introduction

The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new language

The Paradox of Sign Language Morphology