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Grounding in communication
The foundational framework for how conversational participants establish mutual understanding. Introduces common ground and the grounding process as the basis of successful communication.
Tagged: linguistics
13 entries
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Plans and situated actions
Argues that machines designed around planning models miss the inherently situated nature of human communication. Actions emerge from context and interaction, not from pre-formed plans.
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Pragmatics beyond humans
Pragmatic meaning relies on communicative situatedness: knowing who you are, what you want, and what the other party understands. LLMs lack this situatedness, making their pragmatic outputs structurally different from human communication.
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Semiotics: The Basics
An accessible introduction to semiotics, explaining how signs, codes, and meaning-making work across language, images, and culture
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Ambiguity in natural language
A linguistic analysis of the types and sources of ambiguity in natural language, examining how multiple meanings arise from syntax, semantics, and context
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Because Internet
Explores how the internet has transformed English, from emoji and capitalization choices to the way different generations learned to communicate online
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Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
A comprehensive textbook of classical rhetoric covering argument, arrangement, and style, with analysis of both ancient and modern examples
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Discourse, consciousness and time
Investigates how language reflects the workings of consciousness, particularly how speakers manage the flow of information across spoken and written discourse
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Language acquisition
A classic introduction to how children acquire their first language, covering the progression from babbling to grammar and the debate between nature and nurture
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Sequence Organization in Interaction
Schegloff's foundational account of how turns are sequenced in conversation, covering adjacency pairs, pre-sequences, insertions, and the mechanisms that make dialogue coherent
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Speech and language processing
The standard graduate-level textbook for NLP and speech recognition, covering everything from phonetics to dialogue systems with both statistical and symbolic approaches
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Talk
Reveals the hidden structures of everyday conversation using conversation analysis, showing how small linguistic choices shape outcomes in negotiation, medicine, and everyday life
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The sense of style
A writing guide grounded in cognitive science and linguistics, explaining what makes prose clear and elegant and why so much professional writing fails on both counts