Computational and Quantitative Studies: Volume 6(Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday)

This is a deeply impressive book by a prominent linguist. As always, Professor Halliday's contributions are pervasively readable and stimulating. Jan Svartvik, Emeritus Professor, Lund University, Sweden. Throughout his career Professor Halliday has continued to address the issue of the application of linguistic scholarship to Computational and Quantitative Studies. The sixth volume in the collected works of Professor M. A. K. Halliday includes works that span the last five decades, covering developments in machine translation and corpus linguistics. The principles and methods outlined in these papers remain as relevant today as when they were first published, continuing to point the way forward in an endeavour where success depends more on advancing our knowledge of language than machines.

Table of Contents:
Part I - Machine translation: the early years, Editor's Introduction 1 The linguistic basis of a mechanical thesaurus, and its application to English preposition classification 2 Linguistics and machine translation Part II - Probabilistic grammar and the corpus, Editor's Introduction 3 Towards probabilistic interpretations 4 Corpus studies and probabilistic grammar 5 Language as system and language as instance: the corpus as a theoretical construct 6 [with Z L James] A quantitative study of polarity and primary tense in the English Finite clause 7 Quantitative studies and probabilities in grammar 8 The spoken language corpus Part III - Towards "intelligent computing" (computing with Meaning), Editor's Introduction 9 On language in relation to fuzzy logic and intelligent computing 10 Fuzzy grammatics: a systemic functional approach to fuzziness in neutral language 11 Computing meaning: some reflections on past experience and present prospects Appendix: Systems of the English clause: a trial grammar for the PENMAN text generation project. [Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California]

About the Author :
Professor Jonathan J. Webster is Head of the Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at the City University of Hong Kong. He is also the Managing Editor of the International Linguistics Association’s journal WORD, and the editor of the forthcoming Journal of World Languages (2014). M.A.K. Halliday was Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney.

Review :
Reference & Research Book News, August 2006 This I the sixth volume from the collected works of Professor M. A. K. Halliday that runs into ten volumes. Professor Halliday has had a lifelong engagement with language and these volumes represent the outcome... the early articles continue to be relevant and not only from a historical point of view. This unusual book displays Professor Halliday's different concerns and endeavor to give linguistics, particularly, probabilistic corpus studies, a central role in MT. While illuminating the developments, he provides insights and likages with different contemporary subjects. On reading the book, the reader cannot but feel that it is only on the development of a comprehensive theory of meaning that computational linguistics can finally come into its own. 'These four volumes (4, 5, 6 and 7) venture into remarkably diverse fields. How one man could master the minutiae of all these areas of linguistic research is a matter for wonder and admiration. As a linguistic polymath, Halliday far outstrips all contemporaries...One need look for no further explanation of Halliday's current stature as doyen of British linguistics. The publication of Halliday's complete papers is an important contribution to scholarly documentation.'