A theory of language and information : a mathematical approach
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Bibliographic Information
A theory of language and information : a mathematical approach
Clarendon Press, 1991
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Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Professor Harris presents a formal theory of language structure, in which syntax is characterized as an orderly system of departures from random combinations of sounds, words, and indeed of all elements of language. He argues that the combining of words into a sentence constitutes a mathematical object, and that each departure from equiprobability is a contribution both to the structure and to the meaning of a sentence. He discusses the differences in the structure
and content of language, mathematics, and music, and shows that the use of language in a science constitutes a distinguishable sub-language. The structure of that sub-language organizes the information in the science and lies between the structure of language and that of mathematics. The syntactic
theory developed here throws light upon the structuring of information and upon the nature and development of language, which the author shows to be a self-organizing and evolving system.
Table of Contents
- I Introduction: Overview
- Method
- II Theory of syntax: A theory of sentences
- Language structure: The system created by the constraints
- Metalinguistic apparatus within language
- On the mathematics of language
- III Grammatical analysis: Analysis of sentences
- Analysis of the set of sentences
- IV Subsets of sentences: Sentence sequences
- Sublanguages
- V Interpretation: Information
- The nature and development of language
- Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
