The concept of analogy is of central concern to modern cognitive scientists, whereas it has been largely neglected in linguistics in the past four decades. The goal of this thought-provoking book is (1) to introduce a cognitively and linguistically viable notion of analogy; and (2) to re-establish and build on traditional linguistic analogy-based research. As a starting point, a general definition of analogy is offered that makes the distinction between analogy-as-structure and analogy-as-process. Chapter 2 deals with analogy as used in traditional linguistics. It demonstrates how phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and diachronic linguistics make use of analogy and discusses linguistic domains in which analogy does or did not work. The appendix gives a description of a computer program, which performs such instances of analogy-based syntactic analysis as have long been claimed impossible. Chapter 3 supports the ultimate (non-modular) ‘unity of the mind’ and discusses the existence of pervasive analogies between language and such cognitive domains as vision, music, and logic. The final chapter presents evidence for the view that the cosmology of every culture is based on analogy. At a more abstract level, the role of analogy in scientific change is scrutinized, resulting in a meta-analogy between myth and science.

The concept of analogy is of central concern to modern cognitive scientists, whereas it has been largely neglected in linguistics in the past four decades. The goal of this thought-provoking book is (1) to introduce a cognitively and linguistically viable notion of analogy; and (2) to re-establish and build on traditional linguistic analogy-based research. As a starting point, a general definition of analogy is offered that makes the distinction between analogy-as-structure and analogy-as-process. Chapter 2 deals with analogy as used in traditional linguistics. It demonstrates how phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and diachronic linguistics make use of analogy and discusses linguistic domains in which analogy does or did not work. The appendix gives a description of a computer program, which performs such instances of analogy-based syntactic analysis as have long been claimed impossible. Chapter 3 supports the ultimate (non-modular) 'unity of the mind' and discusses the existence of pervasive analogies between language and such cognitive domains as vision, music, and logic. The final chapter presents evidence for the view that the cosmology of every culture is based on analogy. At a more abstract level, the role of analogy in scientific change is scrutinized, resulting in a meta-analogy between myth and science.

Experts from psycholinguistics and English historical linguistics address core factors in language change.

Ranging from tonogenesis, stress shift, and quantity readjustment to paradigmatic levelling, allomorphy, and grammaticalization, this collection covers a wide spectrum of developments, primarily in Germanic, Romance, and Indo-Aryan. A traditional umbrella category of change in systems is that of analogy. Somewhat less sanctioned, markedness is a basic relation shaping the structure of systems, in phonology as well as morphology.

A multiple analogy is a structured comparison in which several sources are likened to a target. In Multiple analogies in science and philosophy, Shelley provides a thorough account of the cognitive representations and processes that participate in multiple analogy formation. Through analysis of real examples taken from the fields of evolutionary biology, archaeology, and Plato's Republic, Shelley argues that multiple analogies are not simply concatenated single analogies but are instead the general form of analogical inference, of which single analogies are a special case. The result is a truly general cognitive model of analogical inference.Shelley also shows how a cognitive account of multiple analogies addresses important philosophical issues such as the confidence that one may have in an analogical explanation, and the role of analogy in science and philosophy. This book lucidly demonstrates that important questions regarding analogical inference cannot be answered adequately by consideration of single analogies alone.

To make programs that understand and interact with the world as well as people do, we must duplicate the kind of flexibility people exhibit when conjecturing plausible explanations of the diverse physical phenomena they encounter. This process often involves drawing upon physical analogies - viewing the situation and its behavior as similar to familiar phenomena, conjecturing that they share analogous underlying causes, and using the plausible interpretation as a foothold to further understanding, analysis, and hypothesis refinement. This thesis investigates analogical reasoning and learning applied to the task of constructing qualitative explanations of observed physical phenomena. Primary emphasis is placed on two central questions. First, how are analogies elaborated to sanction new inferences about a novel situation? This problem is addressed by contextual structure-mapping, a knowledge-intensive adaptation of Gentner's structure-mapping theory. It presents analogy elaboration as a map and analyze cycle, in which two situations are placed in correspondence, followed by problem solving and inference production focused on correspondence inadequacies. These ideas are illustrated via PHINEAS, a program which uses similarity to posit qualitative explanations for time-varying descriptions of physical behaviors. It builds upon existing work in qualitative physics to provide a rich environment in which to describe and reason with theories of the physical world. Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Theses. (kt).