A hell of a tale and Jonathan Beckman gives it all the verve and swagger it deserves . . . I read it with fascination, delight and frequent snorts of incredulity' The Spectator On 5 September 1785, a trial began in Paris that would divide the country, captivate Europe and send the French monarchy tumbling down the slope towards the Revolution. Cardinal Louis de Rohan, scion of one of the most ancient and distinguished families in France, stood accused of forging Marie Antoinette's signature to fraudulently obtain the most expensive piece of jewellery in Europe - a 2,400-carat necklace worth 1.6 million francs. Where were the diamonds now? Was Rohan entirely innocent? Was, for that matter, the queen? What was the role of the charismatic magus, the comte de Cagliostro, who was rumoured to be two-thousand-years old and capable of transforming metal into gold? This is a tale of political machinations and extravagance on an enormous scale; of kidnappings, prison breaks and assassination attempts; of hapless French police disguised as colliers, reams of lesbian pornography and a duel fought with poisoned pigs. It is a detective story, a courtroom drama, a tragicomic farce, and a study of credulity and self-deception in the Age of Enlightenment.
A groundbreaking argument challenging the traditional linguistic representational model of cognition proposes that representational states should be conceptualized as the cognitive equivalent of scale models. In this groundbreaking book, Jonathan Waskan challenges cognitive science's dominant model of mental representation and proposes a novel, well-devised alternative. The traditional view in the cognitive sciences uses a linguistic (propositional) model of mental representation. This logic-based model of cognition informs and constrains both the classical tradition of artificial intelligence and modeling in the connectionist tradition. It falls short, however, when confronted by the frame problem—the lack of a principled way to determine which features of a representation must be updated when new information becomes available. Proposed alternatives, including the imagistic model, have not so far resolved this problem. Waskan proposes instead the Intrinsic Cognitive Models (ICM) hypothesis, which argues that representational states can be conceptualized as the cognitive equivalent of scale models. Waskan argues further that the proposal that humans harbor and manipulate these cognitive counterparts to scale models offers the only viable explanation for what most clearly differentiates humans from other creatures: their capacity to engage in truth-preserving manipulation of representations.
This thorough study of the expression of contrast in the world's vowel systems examines phonetic and phonological differences between so-called strong and weak positions, bringing the full range of data from positional neutralization systems to bear on central questions at the interface between phonetics and phonology. The author draws evidence from a diverse array of sources, bringing together cross-linguistic typological surveys, detailed investigations of the diachrony of specific languages (Slavic, Turkic, Uralic, Austronesian, among many others) and original studies in experimental phonetics. Devoted at once to empirical coverage and to theoretical investigation, this is the first work to compile so exhaustive a study of positional neutralization patterns in the languages of the world. On the basis of this catalog of evidence, the author argues for a diachronically oriented approach to the phonetic motivations behind phonological patterns, with phonologization as its central mechanism. Three pairs of traditionally-identified strong and weak positions for the realization of vowel contrasts are selected and examined in detail: stressed and unstressed syllables, domain final and non-final syllables, and domain initial and non-initial syllables. Neutralization patterns in each position are extracted from survey data, and analyzed in light of the phonetic characteristics of each pair of positions. Both the nature of the patterns identified as well as the variety and sources of exceptions have important consequences for formal phonology, phonetics, and historical linguistics as well.
This thorough study of the expression of contrast in the world's vowel systems examines phonetic and phonological differences between so-called strong and weak positions, bringing the full range of data from positional neutralization systems to bear on central questions at the interface between phonetics and phonology. The author draws evidence from a diverse array of sources, bringing together cross-linguistic typological surveys, detailed investigations of the diachrony of specific languages (Slavic, Turkic, Uralic, Austronesian, among many others) and original studies in experimental phonetics. Devoted at once to empirical coverage and to theoretical investigation, this is the first work to compile so exhaustive a study of positional neutralization patterns in the languages of the world. On the basis of this catalog of evidence, the author argues for a diachronically oriented approach to the phonetic motivations behind phonological patterns, with phonologization as its central mechanism. Three pairs of traditionally-identified strong and weak positions for the realization of vowel contrasts are selected and examined in detail: stressed and unstressed syllables, domain final and non-final syllables, and domain initial and non-initial syllables. Neutralization patterns in each position are extracted from survey data, and analyzed in light of the phonetic characteristics of each pair of positions. Both the nature of the patterns identified as well as the variety and sources of exceptions have important consequences for formal phonology, phonetics, and historical linguistics as well.
An accessible introduction to the phonetic analysis of speech corpora, this workbook-style text provides an extensive set of exercises to help readers develop the necessary skills to design and carry out experiments in speech research. Offers the first step-by-step treatment of advanced techniques in experimental phonetics using speech corpora and downloadable software, including the R programming language Introduces methods of analyzing phonetically-labelled speech corpora, with the goal of testing hypotheses that often arise in experimental phonetics and laboratory phonology Incorporates an extensive set of exercises and answers to reinforce the techniques introduced Accessibly written with easy-to-follow computer commands and spectrograms of speech Companion website at www.wiley.com/go/harrington, which includes illustrations, video tutorials, appendices, and downloadable speech corpora for testing purposes. Discusses techniques in digital speech processing and in structuring and querying annotations from speech corpora Includes substantial coverage of analysis, including measuring gestural synchronization using EMA, the acoustics of vowels, consonant overlap using EPG, spectral analysis of fricatives and obstruents, and the probabilistic classification of acoustic speech data
Skills for Communicating with Patients, Third Edition is one of two companion books on improving communication in medicine, which together provide a comprehensive approach to teaching and learning communication skills throughout all levels of medical education in both specialist and family medicine. Since their publication, the first edition of thi
Since the 1990s there has been an emphasis on the study of ancient Israelite prophecy in its ancient Near East context. Prophecy in the Ancient Near East is the first book-length study that compares prophecy in the ancient Near East by focusing on texts from Mari, the Neo-Assyrian State Archives, and the Hebrew Bible. The author analyzes prophecy in each culture independently before comparisons are made. This method demonstrates how prophecy is a part of the wider system of divination, but also shows where scholarship has unduly imported concepts found in one corpus to the other two. This method, for example, calls into question the supposed link between music and prophecy from the Hebrew Bible to the ancient Near East. This work provides an up-to-date analysis of ancient Near Eastern, including Israelite and Judean, prophecy to scholars and students alike. "I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in prophecy in Israel and the ancient Near East." Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, University of Aberdeen, Review of Biblical Literature "The content of Jonathan Stökl’s book...testifies to the value of the book for the studies of prophecy in the ancient Near East." Wojciech Pikor, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, The Biblical Annals
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