This book presents an experimental-phonetic approach to the study of intonation, defined as the ensemble of pitch variations in speech. It gives a detailed explication of the analysis of intonation by means of the stylization method: studying the perceptual consequences of deliberate simplifications of speech melody makes it possible to give a description in terms of perceptually relevant, discrete events. Theoretical insights and the acoustic, perceptual, and physiological experimental evidence that supports them are amply discussed. Phoneticians and speech scientists will find the...

This interdisciplinary study of recurrent themes in German cinema as it has developed since the early twentieth century focuses on pertinent films of the pre- and post-World War II eras. The author explores the nature of expressionism, which is generally agreed to have ended with the advent of sound, and its persistence in the styles of such modern masters of film noir as Orson Welles and Ingmar Bergman. In considering the possibility of homologies between the necessary silence of pre-sound cinema and the widespread modernist aspiration to an aesthetic of silence, Coates relates theories of...

Term rewriting systems, which developed out of mathematical logic, consist of sequences of discrete steps where one term is replaced with another. Their many applications range from automatic theorem proving systems to computer algebra. This book begins with several examples, followed by a chapter on basic notions that provides a foundation for the rest of the work. First-order and higher-order theories are presented, with much of the latter material appearing for the first time in book form. Subjects treated include orthogonality, termination, lambda calculus and term graph rewriting. There...

Speech, verbally mediated consciousness, and culture most evidently differentiate people from animals. Moreover, verbal communication has historically been viewed as a human attribute. Yet, the biological precursors to verbal communication exist in animal communication: obvious links have been found between human and animal nonverbal vocal communication. Knowledge of these links contribute to our understanding of three major theoretical and clinical issues: the evolution of vocal communication; the process of speech acquisition during infancy; and the pathways of disorders in communicative...

Formal specification is a method for precisely modelling computer-based systems that combines concepts from software engineering and mathematical logic. In this book the authors describe algebraic and state-based specification techniques from the unified view of the Common Object-oriented Language for Design, COLD, a wide-spectrum language in the tradition of VDM and Z. The kernel language is explained in detail, with many examples, including: set representation, a display device, an INGRES-like database system, and a line editor. Fundamental techniques such as initial algebra semantics,...

Type theory is one of the most important tools in the design of higher-level programming languages, such as ML. This book introduces and teaches its techniques by focusing on one particularly neat system and studying it in detail. By concentrating on the principles that make the theory work in practice, the author covers all the key ideas without getting involved in the complications of more advanced systems. This book takes a type-assignment approach to type theory, and the system considered is the simplest polymorphic one. The author covers all the basic ideas, including the system's...

This advanced textbook on topology has three unusual features. First, the introduction is from the locale viewpoint, motivated by the logic of finite observations: this provides a more direct approach than the traditional one based on abstracting properties of open sets in the real line. Second, the author freely exploits the methods of locale theory. Third, there is substantial discussion of some computer science applications. As computer scientists become more aware of the mathematical foundations of their discipline, it is appropriate that such topics are presented in a form of direct...

Information is a central topic in computer science, cognitive science, and philosophy. In spite of its importance in the "information age," there is no consensus on what information is, what makes it possible, and what it means for one medium to carry information about another. Drawing on ideas from mathematics, computer science, and philosophy, this book addresses the definition and place of information in society. The authors, observing that information flow is possible only within a connected distribution system, provide a mathematically rigorous, philosophically sound foundation for a...

The automatic verification of large parts of mathematics has been an aim of many mathematicians from Leibniz to Hilbert. While Godel's first incompleteness theorem showed that no computer program could automatically prove certain true theorems in mathematics, the advent of electronic computers and sophisticated software means in practice there are many quite effective systems for automated reasoning that can be used for checking mathematical proofs. This book describes the use of a computer program to check the proofs of several celebrated theorems in metamathematics including those of Godel...

Computational learning theory is one of the first attempts to construct a mathematical theory of a cognitive process. It has been a field of much interest and rapid growth in recent years. This text provides a framework for studying a variety of algorithmic processes, such as those currently in use for training artificial neural networks. The authors concentrate on an approximate model for learning and gradually develop the ideas of efficiency considerations. Finally, they consider applications of the theory to artificial neural networks. An abundance of exercises and an extensive list of...