Pieter Seuren's Books

A Refutation of Positivism in Philosophy of Mind

Thinking, Reality, and Language

By: Pieter A.M. Seuren

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A Refutation of Positivism in Philosophy of Mind

Thinking, Reality, and Language

By: Pieter A.M. Seuren

This book argues that positivism, though now the dominant paradigm for both the natural and the human sciences, is intrinsically unfit for the latter. In particular, it is unfit for linguistics and cognitive science, where it is ultimately self-destructive, since it fails to account for causality, while the mind, the primary object of research of the human sciences, cannot be understood unless considered to be an autonomous causal force. Author Pieter Albertus Maria Seuren, who died shortly after this manuscript was finished and after a remarkable career, reviews the history of this issue since the seventeenth century. He focuses on Descartes, Leibniz, British Empiricism and Kant, arguing that neither cognition nor language can be adequately accounted for unless the mind is given its full due. This implies that a distinction must be made—following Alexius Meinong, but against Russell and Quine—between actual and virtual reality. The latter is a product of the causally active mind and a necessary ingredient for the setting up of mental models, without which neither cognition nor language can function. Mental models are coherent sets of propositions, and can be wholly or partially true or false. Positivism rules out mental models, blocking any serious semantics and thereby reducing both language and cognition to caricatures of themselves. Seuren presents a causal theory of meaning, linking up language with cognition and solving the old question of what meaning actually amounts to. Key Features: Provides a fundamental reassessment of the methodology of the humanities Makes a distinctive contribution to the conceptual foundations of linguistics and philosophy of mind Explores the philosophical and historical origins of central developments in the human sciences in the past 100 years Offers a new approach to ontology and epistemology in the scientific study of the creative human mind and its products.

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198

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1000880176

ISBN 13

9781000880175

Saussure and Sechehaye: Myth and Genius

A Study in the History of Linguistics and the Foundations of Language

By: Pieter Seuren

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Saussure and Sechehaye: Myth and Genius

A Study in the History of Linguistics and the Foundations of Language

By: Pieter Seuren

In this book, Pieter Seuren argues that Ferdinand de Saussure has been grossly overestimated over the past century, while his junior colleague Albert Sechehaye has been undeservedly ignored. Saussure was anything but the great innovator he is generally believed to be. Sechehaye was a genius providing many trenchant analyses and anticipating many modern insights. The lives and works of both men are discussed in detail and they are placed in the cultural, intellectual and social environment of their day. Much attention is paid to the theoretical issues involved, in particular to the notion and history of structuralism, to the great subject-predicate debate that dominated linguistic theory at the time, and to questions of methodology in the theory of language.

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279

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BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004378154

ISBN 13

9789004378155

A Refutation of Positivism in Philosophy of Mind

Thinking, Reality, and Language

By: Pieter A.M. Seuren

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A Refutation of Positivism in Philosophy of Mind

Thinking, Reality, and Language

By: Pieter A.M. Seuren

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198

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Taylor & Francis

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ISBN 10

1000880176

ISBN 13

9781000880175

From Whorf to Montague

Explorations in the Theory of Language

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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From Whorf to Montague

Explorations in the Theory of Language

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

This book explores the relations between language, the world, the minds of individual speakers, and the collective minds of particular language communities. Pieter Seuren examines the status of abstract rule systems underlying speech and considers how much computational power may be attributed to the human mind. The book opens with chapters on the social reality of language, the ancient question of the primacy of language or thought, and the relation between universal and language-specific features. Professor Seuren then considers links between language, logic, and mathematics: he suggests the facts of language require a theory with abstract principles, and that grammars should be seen as mediating between propositionally structured thoughts and systems, such as speech, for the production of utterances. He argues that grammars are neither autonomous nor independent of meaning. He concludes by considering how a fundamental rephrasing of the basic principles of logic could reconnect it with cognition and language and involve a principled rejection of possible-world semantics.

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Page Count

384

Publisher

OUP Oxford

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191504734

ISBN 13

9780191504730

A View of Language

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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A View of Language

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

This book provides a synopsis of Seuren's work in linguistic theory, syntax, semantics, and creole linguistics over the past three decades.

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552

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199244812

ISBN 13

9780199244812

The Logic of Language

Language From Within Volume II

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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The Logic of Language

Language From Within Volume II

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

This book opens a new perspective on logic. After analyzing the functional adequacy of natural predicate logic and standard modern logic for natural linguistic interaction, the author develops a general theory of discourse-bound interpretation, covering such topics as discourse incrementation, anaphora, presupposition and topic-comment structure.

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445

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199559481

ISBN 13

9780199559480

Language in Cognition

Language From Within Volume I

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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Language in Cognition

Language From Within Volume I

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

Language in Cognition argues that language is based on the human construal of reality. Humans refer to and quantify over virtual entities with the same ease as they do over actual entities: the natural ontology of language, the author argues, must therefore comprise both actual and virtual entities and situations. He reformulates speech act theory, suggesting that the primary function of language is less the transfer of information than the establishing of socially binding commitments or appeals based on the proposition expressed. This leads him first to a new analysis of the systems and structures of cognitive language machinery and their ecological embedding, and finally to a reformulation of the notion of meaning, in which sentence meaning is distinguished from lexical meaning and the vagaries and multifarious applications of lexical meanings may be explained and understood. This is the first of a two-volume foundational study of language, published under the title, Language from Within. Pieter Seuren discusses and analyses such apparently diverse issues as the ontology underlying the semantics of language, speech act theory, intensionality phenomena, the machinery and ecology of language, sentential and lexical meaning, the natural logic of language and cognition, and the intrinsically context-sensitive nature of language - and shows them to be intimately linked. Throughout his ambitious enterprise, he maintains a constant dialogue with established views, reflecting on their development from Ancient Greece to the present. The resulting synthesis concerns central aspects of research and theory in linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science.

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404

Publisher

OUP Oxford

Published Date

ISBN 10

0191567930

ISBN 13

9780191567933

Operators and Nucleus

A Contribution to the Theory of Grammar

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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Operators and Nucleus

A Contribution to the Theory of Grammar

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

Dr Seuren's study deals with the problem of presenting an adequate model of grammatical description. The model he proposes conforms in its main outlines to the transformational generative grammar established by Chomsky, but differs in important respects. These mainly affect that part of Chomsky's syntactic component known as the 'base', which generates basic or 'deep' structures. In the model of the base proposed here two main constituents are distinguished for every deep structure representation of a sentence, vis-a-vis the operators and the nucleus. The deep structure of a sentence is thus seen to be very similar to the logical structure of a proposition. The arguments given in support of this analysis are based on mainly on considerations of simplicity and semantic adequacy.

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Page Count

250

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521148200

ISBN 13

9780521148207

Chomsky's Minimalism

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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Chomsky's Minimalism

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

Noam Chomsky's current theory, published in 1995, is known as The Minimalist Program and has been presented as his crowning achievement. Minimalism has spawned in linguistics an entire research program, despite being fundamentally misguided, according to distinguished linguist and philosopher of language Pieter Seuren. Seuren's accessible and spirited attack argues that the Minimalist Program is deeply flawed. Seuren points to the original acrimonious split in the 1960s and 1970s between Chomsky's generative grammar and the alternative generative semantics proposed by his followers, and argues that the latter theory was sounder and unfairly suppressed. Seuren maintains that this suppression, and the cult surrounding Chomsky and Minimalism more generally, has done great damage to linguistics by impairing open discussion of empirical issues and excluding valid alternatives.

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253

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195173066

ISBN 13

9780195173062

Language Contact and Bilingualism

By: René Appel,Pieter Muysken

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Language Contact and Bilingualism

By: René Appel,Pieter Muysken

What happens – sociologically, linguistically, educationally, politically – when more than one language is in regular use in a community? How do speakers handle these languages simultaneously, and what influence does this language contact have on the languages involved? Although most people in the world use more than one language in everyday life, the approach to the study of language has usually been that monolingualism is the norm. The recent interest in bilingualism and language contact has led to a number of new approaches, based on research in communities in many different parts of the world. This book draws together this diverse research, looking at examples from many different situations, to present the topic in any easily accessible form. Language contact is looked at from four distinct perspectives. The authors consider bilingual societies; bilingual speakers; language use in the bilingual community; finally language itself (do languages change when in contact with each other? Can they borrow rules of grammar, or just words? How can new languages emerge from language contact?). The result is a clear, concise synthesis offering a much-needed overview of this lively area of language study.

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229

Publisher

Amsterdam University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

9053568573

ISBN 13

9789053568576

Postmodifying Clauses in the English Noun Phrase

A Corpus-Based Study

By: Pieter De Haan

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Postmodifying Clauses in the English Noun Phrase

A Corpus-Based Study

By: Pieter De Haan

This book reports on the results of a project whose aim was to give a detailed description of a number of syntactic properties of postmodifying clauses in the English NP, and study the way in which some of these properties are related to each other in a variety of text tyoes. The study is based on an examination of the Nijmegen Corpus, which consists of slightly over 130,000 words of running text. The structure of the NP is described basically in terms of four constituents: DeterminerPremodifierHeadPostmodifier No fewer than 2,430 occurrences of postmodifying clauses in NPs were analysed. A numerical coding scheme was designed, in which 26 different variable features were encoded, describing the properties the postmodifying clauses. These were processed and statistically analysed. The book discusses the methodology adopted and the results of the statistical analyses. Among the properties described are the function of NPs with postmodifying clauses, the structure of these NPs, the realisation and reference of the heads of these NPs, the specific types of postmodifying clause, the actual link words used, the clause patterns occurring in the postmodifying clauses, and the verb phrases in the postmodifying clauses.

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256

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9401207763

ISBN 13

9789401207768

Bilingual Speech

A Typology of Code-Mixing

By: Pieter Muysken

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Bilingual Speech

A Typology of Code-Mixing

By: Pieter Muysken

This book provides an in depth analysis of the different ways in which bilingual speakers switch from one language to another in the course of conversation. This phenomenon, known as code-mixing or code-switching, takes many forms. Pieter Muysken adopts a comparative approach to distinguish between the different types of code-mixing, drawing on a wealth of data from bilingual settings throughout the world. His study identifies three fundamental and distinct patterns of mixing - 'insertion', 'alternation' and 'congruent lexicalization' - and sets out to discover whether the choice of a particular mixing strategy depends on the contrasting grammatical properties of the languages involved, the degree of bilingual competence of the speaker or various social factors. The book synthesizes a vast array of recent research in a rapidly growing field of study which has much to reveal about the structure and function of language.

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Page Count

326

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521771684

ISBN 13

9780521771689

Semantic Syntax

Second Revised Edition

By: Pieter Seuren

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Semantic Syntax

Second Revised Edition

By: Pieter Seuren

This book is the first and so far only formally precise machinery converting well-motivated semantic sentence representations into actual sentences of English, French, German and Dutch. It focuses on the auxiliary and complementation systems of the languages concerned.

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456

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004354298

ISBN 13

9789004354296

Operators and Nucleus

A Contribution to the Theory of Grammar

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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Operators and Nucleus

A Contribution to the Theory of Grammar

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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Page Count

250

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521148200

ISBN 13

9780521148207

Chomsky's Minimalism

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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Chomsky's Minimalism

By: Pieter A. M. Seuren

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253

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Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195173066

ISBN 13

9780195173062

Semantic Syntax

Second Revised Edition

By: Pieter Seuren

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Semantic Syntax

Second Revised Edition

By: Pieter Seuren

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456

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BRILL

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ISBN 10

9004354298

ISBN 13

9789004354296

Book's by Pieter Seuren

A Refutation of Positivism in Philosophy of Mind

A Refutation of Positivism in Philosophy of Mind

Saussure and Sechehaye: Myth and Genius

Saussure and Sechehaye: Myth and Genius

A Refutation of Positivism in Philosophy of Mind

A Refutation of Positivism in Philosophy of Mind

From Whorf to Montague

From Whorf to Montague

A View of Language

A View of Language

The Logic of Language

The Logic of Language

Language in Cognition

Language in Cognition

Operators and Nucleus

Operators and Nucleus

Chomsky's Minimalism

Chomsky's Minimalism

Language Contact and Bilingualism

Language Contact and Bilingualism

Postmodifying Clauses in the English Noun Phrase

Postmodifying Clauses in the English Noun Phrase

Bilingual Speech

Bilingual Speech

Semantic Syntax

Semantic Syntax

Operators and Nucleus

Operators and Nucleus

Chomsky's Minimalism

Chomsky's Minimalism

Semantic Syntax

Semantic Syntax

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