Functional-Historical Approaches to Explanation

Functional-Historical Approaches to Explanation
Author: Tim Thornes
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-07-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027271976

Contributions from both well-known practitioners and new voices in the areas of language typology, historical linguistics, and function-based approaches to language description define this volume, as does its foci in two major geographical areas — southeast Asia and northwestern North America. All of the papers appeal, in one way or another, to functional-historical approaches to explanation. Behind this appeal lies an assumption that languages are selective in their development in ways that are dependent upon the communicative tasks to which they are put. As such, language function accounts for both variation and historical development over time.

History of Functional Analysis

History of Functional Analysis
Author: J. Dieudonne
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 319
Release: 1983-01-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0080871607

History of Functional Analysis presents functional analysis as a rather complex blend of algebra and topology, with its evolution influenced by the development of these two branches of mathematics. The book adopts a narrower definition—one that is assumed to satisfy various algebraic and topological conditions. A moment of reflections shows that this already covers a large part of modern analysis, in particular, the theory of partial differential equations. This volume comprises nine chapters, the first of which focuses on linear differential equations and the Sturm-Liouville problem. The succeeding chapters go on to discuss the ""crypto-integral"" equations, including the Dirichlet principle and the Beer-Neumann method; the equation of vibrating membranes, including the contributions of Poincare and H.A. Schwarz's 1885 paper; and the idea of infinite dimension. Other chapters cover the crucial years and the definition of Hilbert space, including Fredholm's discovery and the contributions of Hilbert; duality and the definition of normed spaces, including the Hahn-Banach theorem and the method of the gliding hump and Baire category; spectral theory after 1900, including the theories and works of F. Riesz, Hilbert, von Neumann, Weyl, and Carleman; locally convex spaces and the theory of distributions; and applications of functional analysis to differential and partial differential equations. This book will be of interest to practitioners in the fields of mathematics and statistics.

Functional Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition

Functional Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition
Author: David G. Lockwood
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 701
Release: 2000-03-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027299684

This volume contains functional approaches to the description of language and culture, and language and cultural change. The approaches taken by the authors range from cognitive approaches including Stratificational grammar to more socially oriented ones including Systemic Functional linguistics. The volume is organized into two sections. The first section ‘Functional Approaches to the Structure of Language: Theory and Practice’ starts with contributions developing a Stratificational model; these are followed by contributions focusing on some related functional model of language; and by articles describing some particular set of language phenomena. In the second section ‘Functional Approaches to the History of Language and Linguistics’ general studies of language change are addressed first; a second group of contributions examines language change, lexicon and culture; and the last cluster of contributions treats the history of linguistics and culture.

The Register-Functional Approach to Grammatical Complexity

The Register-Functional Approach to Grammatical Complexity
Author: Douglas Biber
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2021-12-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000481972

This collection brings together the authors' previous research with new work on the Register-Functional (RF) approach to grammatical complexity, offering a unified theoretical account for its further study. The book traces the development of the RF approach from its foundations in two major research strands of linguistics: the study of sociolinguistic variation and the text-linguistic study of register variation. Building on this foundation, the authors demonstrate the RF framework at work across a series of corpus-based research studies focused specifically on grammatical complexity in English. The volume highlights early work exploring patterns of grammatical complexity in present-day spoken and written registers as well as subsequent studies which extend this research to historical patterns of register variation and the application of RF research to the study of writing development for L1 and L2 English university students. Taken together, along with the addition of introductory chapters connecting the different studies, the volume offers readers with a comprehensive resource to better understand the RF approach to grammatical complexity and its implications for future research. The volume will appeal to students and scholars with research interests in either descriptive linguistics or applied linguistics, especially those interested in grammatical complexity and empirical, corpus-based approaches.

Time Counts

Time Counts
Author: Gregory Wawro
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2022-05-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691155054

How to study the past using data Quantitative Analysis for Historical Social Science advances historical research in the social sciences by bridging the divide between qualitative and quantitative analysis. Gregory Wawro and Ira Katznelson argue for an expansion of the standard quantitative methodological toolkit with a set of innovative approaches that better capture nuances missed by more commonly used statistical methods. Demonstrating how to employ such promising tools, Wawro and Katznelson address the criticisms made by prominent historians and historically oriented social scientists regarding the shortcomings of mainstream quantitative approaches for studying the past. Traditional statistical methods have been inadequate in addressing temporality, periodicity, specificity, and context—features central to good historical analysis. To address these shortcomings, Wawro and Katznelson argue for the application of alternative approaches that are particularly well-suited to incorporating these features in empirical investigations. The authors demonstrate the advantages of these techniques with replications of research that locate structural breaks and uncover temporal evolution. They develop new practices for testing claims about path dependence in time-series data, and they discuss the promise and perils of using historical approaches to enhance causal inference. Opening a dialogue among traditional qualitative scholars and applied quantitative social scientists focusing on history, Quantitative Analysis for Historical Social Science illustrates powerful ways to move historical social science research forward.

New Methods in Historical Corpora

New Methods in Historical Corpora
Author: Paul Durrell, Martin Scheible, Silke Whitt, Richard J. Bennett
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2013-09-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3823367609

Investigating the history of a language depends on fragmentary sources, but electronic corpora offer the possibility of alleviating the problem of 'bad data'. But they cannot overcome it totally, and questions arise of the optimal architecture for a corpus and its representativeness of actual language use, and how a historical corpus can best be annotated to maximize its usefulness. Immense strides have been made in recent years in addressing these questions, with exciting new methods and technological advances. The papers in this volume, which were presented at a conference on New Methods in Historical Corpora (Manchester 2011), exemplify the wide range of these recent developments.

Re/reading the past

Re/reading the past
Author: J.R. Martin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2003-11-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027296022

Re/reading the Past is concerned with the discourses of history, from the complementary perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The papers in the book stress the discursive construction of the past, focussing on the different social narratives which compete for official acknowledgement. Issues of collective and cultural memory are addressed, reflecting the "linguistic turn" in the Social Sciences. The book covers a range of discourses, interpreting texts from popular culture to academic discourse including the construction and evaluation of past events in a variety of places around the world. It is especially timely in its focus on the construction of time and value in a post-colonial world where history discourses are central to on-going processes of reconciliation, debates on war crimes, and the issues of amnesty and restitution. As such the book fills a significant gap in interdisciplinary debates as well as in register and genre analysis, and will be of general interest to historians, political scientists and discourse analysts as well as students and teachers of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes).

Theoretical Methods in Social History

Theoretical Methods in Social History
Author: Arthur L. Stinchcombe
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2013-10-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1483264858

Theoretical Methods in Social History examines how generality can be wrested from historical facts. The book explores the various aspects on the application of social theory to historical materials. Chapters delve on various historical issues such as the sociological bias of Trotsky and De Tocqueville; functional analysis of class relations in Smelser and Bendix; and the analogy between intellectual productions. Historians and philosophers will find the book interesting.