In 1852 Peter Mark Roget eclipsed a rich tradition of topically based dictionaries with the publication of his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas. Based on intuition as much as on specific linguistic principles, Roget's book has been a bestseller ever since and is one of the most widely-used reference works ever published. In this book Werner H--uuml--;llen gives the first history of its genesis and publication, and investigates the principles of its structural design. The author opens with an account of Roget's life and his background in natural science. He then charts the parallel histories of dictionaries of synonyms and concepts within the general context of lexicography. Synonymy, he argues, is a necessary feature of languages without which communication would be impossible. He traces its theory and practice from Plato to the emergence of French and English synonym dictionaries in the seventeenth century. Roget's was the first such book to be arranged by topic and the first to encompass the semantic network of the entire language. The author examines the manner and method of its compilation, the practical outcomes of the traditions on which it was based, and the ways in which the Thesaurus reflects and reveals Roget's beliefs and background. A History of Roget's Thesaurus will interest students and scholars of linguistics, semantics, and lexicography, as well as anyone wishing to know more about a great literary achievement and an astonishing publishing phenomenon.

In this book Werner Hüllen discusses the influence of Roget's Thesaurus abroad (Germany and the Romance countries) and examines how the Thesaurus prepared the way for the more recent idea of network semantics. He concludes by considering the role of synonymy in language from a perspective of cognitive linguistics.

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This book is a much-needed scholarly intervention and postcolonial corrective that examines why and when and how misunderstandings of Chinese writing came about and showcases the long history of Chinese theories of language. 'Ideography' as such assumes extra-linguistic, trans-historical, universal 'ideas' which are an outgrowth of Platonism and thus unique to European history. Classical Chinese discourse assumes that language (and writing) is an arbitrary artifact invented by sages for specific reasons at specific times in history. Language by this definition is an ever-changing technology amenable to historical manipulation; language is not the House of Being, but rather a historically embedded social construct that encodes quotidian human intentions and nothing more. These are incommensurate epistemes, each with its own cultural milieu and historical context. By comparing these two traditions, this study historicizes and decolonializes popular notions about Chinese characters, exposing the Eurocentrism inherent in all theories of ideography. Ideography and Chinese Language Theory will be of significant interest to historians, sinologists, theorists, and scholars in other branches of the humanities.

Large computational lexicons are central NLP resources. Swedish FrameNet++ aims to be a versatile full-scale lexical resource for NLP containing many kinds of linguistic information. Although focused on Swedish, this ongoing effort, which includes building a new Swedish framenet and recycling existing lexicons, has offered valuable insights into general aspects of lexical-resource building for NLP, which are discussed in this book: computational and linguistic problems of lexical semantics and lexical typology, the nature of lexical items (words and multiword expressions), achieving interoperability among heterogeneous lexical content, NLP methods for extending and interlinking existing lexicons, and deploying the new resource in practical NLP applications. This book is targeted at everyone with an interest in lexicography, computational lexicography, lexical typology, lexical semantics, linguistics, computational linguistics and related fields. We believe it should be of particular interest to those who are or have been involved in language resource creation, development and evaluation.

A Companion to the History of the English Language addresses the linguistic, cultural, social, and literary approaches to language study. The first text to offer a complete survey of the field, this volume provides the most up-to-date insights of leading international scholars. An accessible reference to the history of the English language Comprises more than sixty essays written by leading international scholars Aids literature students in incorporating language study into their work Includes an historical survey of the English language, from its Germanic and Indo- European beginnings to modern British and American English Enriched with maps, diagrams, and illustrations from historical publications Introduces the latest scholarship in the field