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Elsevier

Books in Arts and humanities

Elsevier's Arts and Humanities titles encompass a rich spectrum of scholarship that explores human culture, history, philosophy, and creative expression. These works offer deep insights into language, literature, visual arts, and critical theory, supporting the academic community in understanding diverse perspectives and cultural legacies. Designed for scholars, educators, and students, this collection bridges classic studies with contemporary issues, fostering a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the human experience.

  • Adolescence

    The Transitional Years
    • 1st Edition
    • J. Roy Hopkins
    • English
    Adolescence: The Transitional Years presents the intricate physical, emotional, and behavioral changes that occur during the years between childhood and adulthood. This book provides psychological studies of adolescence and the methods used to gain information about adolescent development. Organized into 12 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the contributions of psychology to understanding the transition from childhood to adulthood. This text then reviews the changes at puberty, including the sequence of development for girls and boys and the underlying physiological mechanisms responsible. Other chapters consider the cultural variations in the mode of transition from childhood to adulthood. This book provides as well a brief overview of the psychological dimensions of self-identity. The final chapter deals with the educational experience for adolescents and examines the factors associated with different levels of educational attainment. This book is a valuable resource for developmental psychologists, sociologists, geneticists, anthropologists, theorists, and research workers.

  • Equity and Justice in Social Behavior

    • 1st Edition
    • Jerald Greenberg + 1 more
    • English
    Equity and Justice in Social Behavior provides a critical assessment of the social psychological knowledge relevant to justice. This book illustrates how the broad concept of justice pervades the core literature of social psychology. Organized into 12 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the primary justice theories and identifies some of the focal issues with which they are concerned. This text then provides the necessary theoretical background for the study. Other chapters consider the various individual difference variables known to affect adherence to social justice norms. This book explains as well how the perceived causes of justice affect attempts to seek redress, and how actors and observers diverge in their perspectives about justice. The final chapter deals with the normative and instrumental interpretations that have been offered to explain justice behavior. This book is a valuable resource for social psychologists, social scientists, philosophers, political actors, theorists, and graduate students.

  • Kingsmill Plantations, 1619—1800

    Archaeology of Country Life in Colonial Virginia
    • 1st Edition
    • William M. Kelso
    • English
    Kingsmill Plantations, 1619-1800: Archaeology of Country Life in Colonial Virginia covers the historical and archaeological aspects, along with reconstruction attempt of a typical setting of seven plantation sites at Kingmill, near Williambsburg, Virginia. This book contains five chapters that focus on the settlement and development of Kingsmill’s homesteads and estates. Other chapters provide the names and personalities for the plantation sites at Kingmill. Considerable archaeological findings concerning the sites’ manor, tenements, mansions, houses, quarters, and outbuildings are discussed. The remaining chapters deal with the evaluation of the sites’ gardens, wells, waste, pots, bones, and status. This book is intended primarily for architectural historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists.

  • A Century of Controversy

    Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960
    • 1st Edition
    • Elman R Service
    • E. A. Hammel
    • English
    A Century of Controversy: Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960 is an assessment of the history of ethnology in terms of its intellectual progress, with emphasis on the controversial issues that were broached between 1860 and 1960. Two related philosophical or theoretical poses that characterized the prominent ethnological thinkers of this period, and earlier, are related to this phenomenon. One was the prevalent positivism, the other the belief in human progress as a form of social, cultural, and mental evolution. Comprised of 19 chapters, this volume begins by looking at several eminent scholars dealing more closely with the subject of ethnology, including Henry Maine and John F. McLennan in Great Britain; Johann J. Bachofen in Switzerland; and Fustel de Coulanges in France. In particular, the chapter examines the disagreement among Maine, Bachofen, McLennan, and Fustel de Coulanges as to the nature of the earliest society and its form of marriage; the nature of the evolutionary transformations of society (especially from primitive society to civilization); and the actual meaning and function of kinship terminology. The next two chapters describe the positive, useful discoveries as well as the mistakes and weaknesses of Lewis H. Morgan's work, with particular reference to his classificatory kinship nomenclature. Subsequent sections focus on controversies surrounding kinship terminology; social structure; the origins of government; the economic life of primitive peoples; and society and culture. This book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology.

  • Regional Analysis

    Volume 2: Social Systems
    • 1st Edition
    • Carol A. Smith
    • English
    Regional Analysis, Volume II: Social Systems consists of studies on the general applications of the regional framework for analyzing socioeconomic systems as they exist and develop in territorial-environm... systems. This volume is concerned with social systems, emphasizing the interrelationships among the institutional components of complex societies. Marriage and kinship, political organization, formation of ethnic and cultural-territorial groups, and stratification systems that are affected by regional-environment... variables are also covered. This publication is beneficial to social and regional scientists, geographers, economists, social anthropologists, archeologists, sociologists, and political scientists intending to acquire knowledge of the implications of rural-urban relations and regional settlement patterns.

  • Sign Language of the Deaf

    Psychological, Linguistic, and Sociological Perspectives
    • 1st Edition
    • I. M. Schlesinger + 1 more
    • English
    Sign Language of the Deaf: Psychological, Linguistic, and Sociological Perspectives provides information pertinent to the psychological, educational, social, and linguistic aspects of sign language. This book presents the development in the study of sign language. Organized into four parts encompassing 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the fascinating account of sign language acquisition by small children. This text then explores the grammar of sign language and discusses the linguistic status of natural and contrived sign languages. Other chapters consider the many peculiarities of the lexicon and grammar of sign language, and its differences in such respects from oral language. This book discusses as well sign language from the angle of psycholinguistics. The final chapter deals with the educational implications of the use of sign language. This book is a valuable resource for linguists and psycholinguists. Readers who are interested in sign language will also find this book useful.

  • Communication and Affect

    A Comparative Approach
    • 1st Edition
    • Thomas Alloway + 2 more
    • English
    Communication and Affect: A Comparative Approach examines the communication of affective or emotional feelings from a broad phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspective. The book presents basic research findings and theoretical orientations with regards to affective responses and communication involving humans, machines, chimpanzees, monkeys, dogs, and rodents. Comprised of seven chapters, this volume begins with a discussion on the development of love in primates throughout its entire sequential course, from the mother-infant stage of pious, proper propinquity to the adult stage of seasoned, salacious, seductive success. In all the stages of love, much of the essential social information is supplied by unlearned communications which are rapidly overlaid by a veneer of learning. Subsequent chapters explore attachment and dependence; signs of language in children and chimpanzees; affective aspects of aesthetic communication; the communication of affect and the possibility of human-machine interaction as a dyad; and development of affect in dogs and rodents. This book should be of use to psychologists, linguists, and educators interested in the evolution and development of communication and affect in mammals.

  • Tone

    A Linguistic Survey
    • 1st Edition
    • Victoria A. Fromkin
    • English
    Tone: A Linguistic Survey is a nine-chapter text that considers the phonetics and phonology of tone from both a synchronic and a diachronic point of view. The first chapters deal with the physiological and perceptual correlations of tone. These chapters also describe the interactions of tonal and nontonal features. The succeeding chapters provide the phonetic basis for phonological tonal phenomena. These topics are followed by discussions of the physical and physiological aspects of tone, the number of possible contrastive tones in a language, and a suprasegmental representation of tones based on linguistic evidence. This text also summarizes the kinds of tone rules found in languages and the important syntactic function played by tone in a number of the world’s languages, particularly those in Africa. The final chapters look into the general and specific principles that constrain historical tone change. This book will prove useful to students with phonology course.

  • Montague Grammar

    • 1st Edition
    • Barbara H Partee
    • English
    Montague Grammar is a collection of papers that discusses Richard Montague's work on the syntax and semantics of natural languages. The papers examine the applications of Montague's theory to problems of syntax and semantics, and compares Montague's approach to other theories of language. One paper describes the features in Montague's "The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English" (PTQ), namely, the grammatical categories and lexicon, the rules most similar to CF-rules, and the treatment of quantification. Another paper presents mechanisms to Montague's grammatical framework which will allow a variety of English constructions—especi... those involving sentence embedding. The paper discusses syntactic rules, such as noun phrases, verb phrases, subject-predicate sentences, variable binding, abstracts, verbs taking infinitive complements, the copula, participles. One paper describes a fragment of English that is a variation and extension of the fragment presented in Montague. It also analyses adjectival phrases, three-place and other kinds of verbs, the passive voice, reflexive pronouns, and sentences using the dummy subject "it." Another paper proposes rules, syntactics, and semantics for use in nonrestrictive clauses in a Montague grammar. One paper analyzes factives, their semantic and syntactic properties using the work of Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1971). Montague's "Universal Grammar" (UG) invokes expositions of Montague syntax, Cooper syntax, theorems on conversion process, semantic interpretation, semantic equivalence of the two systems, and interpretive semantics. The collection is intended for readers of Montague, as well as for linguists, philosophers, and students of language.

  • Formal Language Theory

    Perspectives and Open Problems
    • 1st Edition
    • Ronald V. Book
    • English
    Formal Language Theory: Perspectives and Open Problems focuses on the trends and major open problems on the formal language theory. The selection first ponders on the methods for specifying families of formal languages, open problems about regular languages, and generators of cones and cylinders. Discussions focus on cylinders of algebraic languages, cone of algebraic languages, regularity of noncounting classes, group complexity, specification formalism, and grammars. The publication then elaborates on very small families of algebraic nonrational languages and formal languages and their relation to automata. The book tackles morphisms on free monoids and language theory, homomorphisms, and survey of results and open problems in the mathematical theory of L systems. Topics include single finite substitutions iterated, single homomorphisms iterated, representation of language families, homomorphism equivalence on a language, and problems about infinite words. The selection is a valuable source of data for researchers interested in the formal language theory.

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