CSLI Publications

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Three Demonstrations and a Funeral and Other Essays María de Ponte, Kepa Korta, and John Perry

The result of the collaboration between three distinguished philosophers, this book comprises the best sample of one of the most original theories in contemporary philosophy of language and communication—Critical Pragmatics. They present the development of the theory from its initial sprout, with “Three Demonstrations and a Funeral” (2006) as its first visible result, to a critical clarification of its tenets in “Critical Pragmatics: Nine Misconceptions” (2023). After Korta and Perry’s Critical Pragmatics (2011), this is the most important book on Critical Pragmatics, as it was conceived, developed and applied by its creators. Having de Ponte, Korta and Perry’s most important papers together on one place will be of great value to both philosophers and linguists.
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Idiomatic Expressions and Grammatical Constructions Paul Kay, Laura Michaelis, Ivan A.Sag and Dan Flickinger

A thorough investigation into idioms and their grand meaning, including how best to analyze them. Any theory of idioms should be part and parcel of a general theory of grammar, adding as little machinery to one’s overall grammatical approach as possible in describing both the syntactic and semantic idiosyncrasies and regularities of this large class of linguistic expressions. This volume presents several lexicalist analyses of idioms within the framework of Sign-Based Construction Grammar, reflecting three guiding principles: many but not all idioms are syntactically and semantically compositional, dividing into distinct classes; idioms are analyzable in terms of a suitably rich lexicon and a set of constructions (lexical and syntactic rules) with corresponding meaning representations; and idiomaticity is a gradient phenomenon, exhibiting wide variation in degree of syntactic flexibility and meaning.
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Logic, Language and
Philosophy full blurb

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Logic, Language and Philosophy: An Introduction to Standard Logic Fenrong Liu and Martin Stokhof

The book offers an in-depth introduction to standard proposition logic and predicate logic, introducing both model-theoretic semantics as well as natural deduction proof systems. It also provides first introduction to meta-logic, by discussing the soundness and completeness theorems for proposition logic.
In addition the book also gives brief introductions to extensions of standard logic, in the form of many-valued logics and intensional (modal and temporal). And it introduces various forms of pragmatics to illustrate the limitations of logical analyses of natural language meaning.
Throughout the logical material is accompanied by chapters that are devoted to applications of logic in the analysis of philosophical problems and to philosophical questions that are raised by logic itself. For this purpose, it uses both classical material (from Frege, Russell, Strawson) as well as more contemporary contributions.

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Foundations of Logic: Completeness, Incompleteness, Computability
By Dag Westerståhl

This book provides a concise but detailed account of modern logic's three cornerstones: the completeness of first-order logic, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems, and Turing's analysis of computability. In addition to the central text, an appendix explains the required technical terminology and facts. The main ideas behind the three cornerstones are explained in a simple, easy-to-grasp manner, and it is possible to select among the chapters and sections so that the reader becomes familiar with these ideas, even if some technicalities are skipped or postponed. A wealth of exercises accompany a wide selection of materials, including the histories and philosophical implications of the three main premises, making it useful as a textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses focusing on any of the three main themes. The material is rigorous and detailed but keeps the main ideas in sight, and there are numerous excursions into more advanced material for curious readers to explore.

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The Martin Gardner Bibliography
By Dana Richards

Martin Gardner (1914–2010) was a polymath whose international reputation extended from mathematics to literature, philosophy to science, and magic to fiction. This comprehensive bibliography covers every aspect of Gardner's lengthy publishing career, from 1930 to 2010, and features detailed descriptions and indexes of his writings on mathematics and many other topics. Editor Dana Richards worked directly with Gardner on this project from 1978 until Gardner's death; it draws on the two hundred boxes of Gardner's mathematical papers held in the Stanford archives.

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Probabilistic Approaches to Linguistic Theory
Edited by Jean-Philippe Bernardy, Rasmus Blanck, Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, Shalom Lappin, Aleksandre Maskharashvili

In this collection of papers, leading researchers in computational and formal linguistics present new approaches to the central questions of linguistic theory, explore the role of probabilistic and machine learning methods in the development of linguistic theories, and reveal new applications of recent learning and modeling methods in AI. Through a highly interdisciplinary framework, this book tackles central questions in syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sentence processing, and dialogue, offering insights that go well beyond traditional linguistic orthodoxy. New and non-traditional approaches to longstanding issues allow the researchers to challenge and set aside entrenched theories, in favor of experimentally and computationally robust new models. This book is a must-have for researchers and graduate students in linguistics, computer science (AI and NLP), psychology, and cognitive science, and a useful reference work for industrial research labs and AI systems development.

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Constraint-Based Syntax and Semantics: Papers in Honor of Danièle Godard
Edited by Anne Abeillé and Olivier Bonami

This volume is devoted to the syntax and semantics of various languages, studied with models based on constraints. Both French and international linguists present their work in tribute to Danièle Godard, emeritus research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France, a member of the Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle at Université Paris Diderot, and a specialist in the syntax and semantics of French and Romance languages.

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Information and Mind: The Philosophy of Fred Dretske
Edited by Paul Skokowski

This volume examines a selection of topics that Fred Dretske addressed in his philosophical career. The topics range from one of the earliest problems Dretske analyzed, the nature of seeing an object, to epistemological issues that he worked on from mid-career onwards, to issues he focused on later in his career, including information, mental represnataion, and conscious experience.

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Form and Meaning in Language, Volume III
Charles J. Fillmore

This volume continues the collection of work by Charles J. Fillmore, which he started in 2003. Taken together, the work gathered in these volumes reflects Fillmore's desire to make sense of the workings of language in a way that keeps in mind questions of language form, language use, and the conventions linking form, meaning, and practice.

Divided into four parts, the papers collected in Volume III explore the organization of linguistic knowledge; the foundations of constructing grammar; construction grammar analyses; and constructions and language in use.

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Form and Meaning in Language, Volume II
Charles J. Fillmore

Divided into four parts, the papers collected in Volume II explore language in use; semantics and pragmatics; text and discourse; and language in society.

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LingVis: Visual Analytics for Linguistics
Edited by Miriam Butt, Annette Hautli-Janisz, and Verena Lyding

This volume collects landmark research in a burgeoning field of visual analytics for linguistics, called LingVis. Combining linguistic data and linguistically oriented research questions with techniques and methodologies developed in the computer science fields of visual analytics and information visualization, LingVis is motivated by the growing need within linguistic research for dealing with large amounts of complex, multidimensional data sets. An innovative exploration into the future of LingVis in the digital age, this foundational book both provides a representation of the current state of the field and communicates its new possibilities for addressing complex linguistic questions across the larger linguistic community.

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Revisiting the Essential Indexical
John Perry

IN THIS BOOK, renowned philosopher John Perry responds to criticisms of his influential writing on "the essential indexical." He begins by explaining the conclusions of his past articles. He then argues that many criticisms are based on confusions about the relation between the issues opacity and cognitive significance, and other basic misunderstandings of his views. While dealing with criticisms, Perry makes a number of points about self-knowledge, the issue that motivated his original papers.

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Bantu Applicative Constructions
Sara Pacchiarotti

This book focuses on different clause-level constructions involving reflexes of the Proto-Bantu multifunctional applicative suffix *-ɪd. These constructions, widespread across the Bantu family, show that applicative morphology is not always syntactically valence-increasing. It performs many non-syntactic functions - some purely semantic, others related to information structure - which are often not addressed in the relevant literature.

Besides comparative data from the entire Bantu domain, this work includes a first-ever historical case study of lexicalized, valence-neutral applicative constructions in the southern Bantu language Tswana. Sara Pacchiarotti shows that several non-syntactic functions of applicative morphology in Bantu have parallels in genealogically unrelated and geographically distant language families. Such often-overlooked cross-linguistic data represent a serious challenge for most current operational definitions of applicative morphology, inside and outside of Bantu, as being ontologically a morphosyntactic valence-increasing device.

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Knuth par Knuth
Donald E. Knuth

The interviews in this volume form the nearest thing possible to an autobiography of eminent computer scientist Donald E. Knuth. Based on the English-language Companion to the Papers of Donald Knuth, also published by CSLI Publications, this book brings the highlights of that material to a Francophone audience.

Ce livre est la traduction des entretiens que Donald Knuth a accordés à Dikran Karagueuzian, dans lesquels il passe en revue des moments importants de sa vie permettant de mieux comprendre son œvre, que ce soit sa prime enfance et le milieu qui a formé son caractère, ses travaux d'étudiants l'ayant conduit à devenir un spécialiste des compilateurs, les raisons qui l'ont poussé à s'orienter vers la combinatoire en informatique et à l'analyse des algorithmes, sa passion pour la typographie et la création de, bien sûr, son TEX grand œvre encore non achevé: The Art of Computer Programming.

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CSLI Standards

New Edition!
Language, Proof and Logic (second edition) Dave Barker-Plummer, Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy

This textbook/software package is a self-contained introduction to the basic concepts of logic: language, truth, argument, consequence, proof and counterexample. No prior study of logic is assumed, and, it is appropriate for introductory and second courses in logic. The unique on-line grading service almost instantly grades solutions to hundred of computer exercises. It is specially devised to be used by philosophy instructors in a way that is useful to undergraduates of philosophy, computer science, mathematics, and linguistics.
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Relevant Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded: An Introduction to the Structure and Use of English for Teachers by Paul Justice.

The revised and expanded edition of Relevant Linguistics provides a straightforward, accessible introduction to the basics of English phonetics, phonology, morphology, morphophonology, and syntax for education students and all non-linguistics majors.
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Syntactic Theory, 2nd edition: A Formal Introduction by Ivan A. Sag, Thomas Wasow, and Emily M. Bender.

The second edition of Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction expands and improves on a truly unique introductory syntax textbook. Like the first edition, it focuses on the development of precisely formulated grammars whose empirical predictions can be directly tested.
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