... based on the minimum description length principle, in line with the approach to morphological learning embodied in John Goldsmith’s Linguistica algorithm. The algorithm is implemented as a computer program named Arabica and evaluated with regard to its ability to learn the system of Arabic noun plurals...

... discusses Sumpa Khenpo's General Description of the World, known to have been a popular text among premodern readers of Tibetan. Middle Ganges region Thonmi Sambhota Thon mi sam bho ṭa Amdo Gendun Chöphel A mdo dge 'dun chos 'phel Bengal Bihar Magadha Pāla dynasty and period in India...

... of accumulated experience in particular types of perception, guided and shaped by the value that is placed on certain types of recognition. dark matter hermeneutics stereotypes cultural experience photography Pirahãs smoking anthropology art costumes for dancing dance description emic etic and vs...

..., affirmative criticism in its various forms: a turn from negative to positive affects; from methods of reading that emphasize “depth” to methods that value the “surface” of texts; from interpretation to description; and from professionalized criticism to a revaluation of lay reading. The chapter culminates...

...,” “the infernal pit.” A perfect example of proper name and definite description merged into one. Apsu Marduk Tiamat abyss Bible The coordinates difference Enuma elish limit naming proper names and definite descriptions rhetoric xiv story xiii topos Damkina Ea Janus Mummu forms Anshar Kingo...

...This chapter uses the shield of Achilles, a quintessential example of a picture that aspires to depict the whole world, as a backdrop in defining description and narration. This shield is described in the eighteenth book of the Iliad, when the divine craftsman Hephaistos forges new...

... of language use in their descriptions, characters, and plots, Object Lessons not only shows how novels make references, but how they are about referring....

...This chapter assesses the politics of contemporary queer studies, considering its longstanding difficulties with the ordinary and the everyday. Addressing recent debates in the field regarding the politics of anti-normativity, it traces how queer studies turned the descriptive study of deviance...

...This chapter begins by reassessing the place of description in novel theory, returning to Georg Lukács’s influential argument that naturalism's prioritization of descriptive details led to mortification and the leveling of narrative significance, which arrested historical dynamism and reflected...

...Beginning from the premise (discussed in the Introduction) that modernist description turns away from the form of a visualizing prose of things, this chapter takes seriously Henry James’s pervasive attention to things “in the air” in his late works. Arguing that the atmosphere of an interaction...

...Description is a ubiquitous feature of novels, but it has typically been considered secondary (if not an obstacle) to the demands of narrative. This prejudice was especially pronounced in the early twentieth century among varied thinkers (from Virginia Woolf to Georg Lukács) who were reacting...

... Egypt’s Roman ruins, and the occupation of Rome in 1806, with its designs for the restructuring of the ancient metropole, as the third act. The chapter ends with Joseph Fourier’s introduction to the Description de l’Égypte as a Napoleonic manifesto in the vein of Augustus’s Res Gestae. Fourier rewrites...

...This chapter sets the theoretical foundation for the rest of the book. It pauses on instances of the liveliness of things as they appear in various ancient narratives, in order to reflect on fantasy, reality, and the art of description in antiquity, as well as the contemporary fields...

... adverbs and thick description to better understand the interpretive infrastructure that facilitated, empowered, and rendered meaningful the punishment of pirates. In the cultural systems documented in preceding chapters state agents created the capacity to act in ways that were simultaneously violent...

...This chapter discusses the stylistic qualities of the verbal descriptions written by key members of the early Royal Society. It argues that those descriptions were intended to produce pleasurable effects that were both bodily and spiritual. The chapter makes this case by focusing on the stylistic...

... remains unclear. This issue was already addressed in the mid-eighteenth century by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his treatise Laocoon: An Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Lessing systematically compared narration and description as two fundamental possibilities...

... “art of describing” emerged that tried to grasp “things in themselves,” stripped of all subjective projections. However, while late sixteenth-century empiricist historians and scientists were producing factual descriptions of things, poets of the period were crafting elaborate literary descriptions...

... certitude certainty fixity fixed fixing origin origination start unfixed unfixing accuracy choice difference diversity habit idiomatic improvisation loneliness non idiomatic improvisation practise practice precision solitude secret improvisation practice predicament description Given...

.... The montage technique of Walter Benjamin, the general technique of parataxis, and the hybrid experiments of contemporary poets are mobilized in the development of a way of writing place that insists on the power of description, juxtaposition, and hybridity to approach the problem of accounting...

...Although it is a ubiquitous feature of the novel, description remains undervalued and undertheorized. This Introduction highlights the variety and historicity of descriptive modes, as well as its role in determining or “making up” its objects. Focused on the modernist backlash against the perceived...