CONTINUITY IN LINGUISTIC SEMANTICS -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- PREFACE -- PART I. LINGUISTIC ISSUES -- THE LIMITS OF CONTINUITY : DISCRETENESS IN COGNITIVE SEMANTICS -- REFERENCES -- CONTINUITY AND MODALITY -- Introduction -- 1. The choice of a theoretical framework and an attempt at a definition of continuity -- 2. The example of pouvoir -- 3. Manifestations of continuity in other types of examples -- REFERENCES -- CONTINUUM IN COGNITION AND CONTINUUM IN LANGUAGE -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Theses about the continuum -- 3. The cognitive-conceptual dimension of Participation -- 4. Linguistic coding and typology -- 5. Concluding remarks -- REFERENCES -- IS THERE CONTINUITY IN SYNTAX ? -- 0. Introduction -- 1. Discreteness : a point of transition between two continuities -- 2. The degree of discreteness in linguistic coding -- 3. Are units totally discrete ? -- 4. Problems of grammatical categorization -- 5. The example of Fr. que -- REFERENCES -- THE USE OF COMPUTER CORPORAIN THE TEXTUAL DEMONSTRABILITY OF GRADIENCE IN LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES -- 1. Introduction -- 2. An Example of Gradience : the English Genitive and of-Constructions -- 3. Technique of Analysis -- 4. Step-by-step Methodology -- 5. Statistical Modelling -- 6. Conclusions Drawn from the Analysis -- 7. General Conclusion -- REFERENCES -- A "CONTINUOUS DEFINITION" OF POLYSEMOUS ITEMS : ITS BASIS, RESOURCES AND LIMITS -- 1. How to build a "continuous -- definition" -- 2. Basis, resources and limits of a "continuous definition" -- 2.1. Basis -- 2.2. Resources -- 2.3. Limits -- 2.4. Specificity -- REFERENCES -- THE CHALLENGES OF CONTINUITY FOR A LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO SEMANTICS -- 0. Introduction -- 1. The linguistic phenomena -- 2. Underlying problematics -- 3. Arguments : the example of polysemy -- REFERENCES -- PART II. MODELLING ISSUES.

WHAT KIND OF MODELS DO WE NEED FOR THE SIMULATION OF UNDERSTANDING ? -- 1. The Framework -- 2. Against Arguments of Necessity -- 3 . Continuity versus Multiplicity -- 4. About criteria -- 5. Advantages of (a multiplicity of) Discrete Models over Continuous Models -- a) Labelling facts and Meta-Reasoning -- b) Qualitative Physics -- c) Vagueness -- d) Thresholds and Trade-offs -- e) Consistency -- 6. Conclusion -- REFERENCES -- CONTINUUM, COGNITION AND LINGUISTICS -- 1. Various legitimacies of continuum related to linguistics -- 1.1. The perception input -- 1.2. Cognitive dynamism -- 1.3. A continuum of meaning ? -- 2. Cognitive space and transcendental space -- 2.1. The position of the problem -- 2.2. The cognitive point of view : Talmy and Poincaré -- 2.3. Confrontation between cognitive-linguistic space and transcen-dental/geometrical space -- 3. Conclusion : the dispute of continuum -- REFERENCES -- REFLECTIONS ON HANSJAKOB SEILER'S CONTINUUM -- 1. The opposition Continuous-Discrete : Generalities -- 2. The Discrete in the continuous -- 3. The notion of genus and the couple Genus-Species -- 4. Archeology of Seiler's continuum -- 5. Seiler's continuum and the theory of C.S. Peirce -- REFERENCES -- ATTRACTOR SYNTAX : MORPHODYNAMICS AND COGNITIVE GRAMMAR -- Introduction -- 1. The problem of syntactic constituency as a challenge for con-nectionist modeling -- 1.1. The main arguments of Fodor and Pylyshyn -- 1.2. Smolensky's tensorial product -- 1.3. The core of the debate : the need of a configurational definition of the roles -- 2. From syntactic constituency to cognitive archetypes -- 3. From cognitive image-schemas to perceptive constituency -- 4. Contour propagation and the cut locus theory -- REFERENCES -- A DISCRETE APPROACH BASED ON LOGIC SIMULATING CONTINUITY IN LEXICAL SEMANTICS.

1. Polysemous lexical elements : words that tamper with the stability of concepts -- 1.1. An undecidability in the type of relationship between concepts and polysemous words -- 1.2. Are polysemous words modifiers of the essence of concepts ? -- 2. How a discrete approach could still manage to give the impression of continuity -- 2.1. Continuity as a decomposition into fine-grained particles -- 2.1.1. Example of a componential representation of continuity -- 2.1.2. Continuity in the depth of interpretation -- 2.2. The requirements for a discrete computational approach to polysemy -- 2.3. The EDGAR1 model : a possible solution considering constraints and goals -- 2.3.1. Formalization of the lexical model -- 2.3.2. Formalization of the interpretation function -- 2.4. Possibilities and Limits of the EDGAR model -- REFERENCES -- COARSE CODING AND THE LEXICON -- Coarse Coding -- Coarse Coding and Locating Visual Features -- Coarse Coding and the Lexicon -- Limits to Linguistic Compositionality -- Is the word the building block ? -- Words' contextual stickiness -- Why don't words with many meanings, or one abstract meaning, pose a comprehension burden ? -- Computational realization -- An Illustrative Model -- Construction of corpus and training -- Network behavior -- Assessment of the implementation of prepositional polysemy -- Processing Factors -- Closing Remarks, Related Approaches -- REFERENCES -- CONTINUITY, POLYSEMY, AND REPRESENTATION : UNDERSTANDING THE VERB CUT -- Introduction -- 1. The Verb cut -- 2. Inference in Localist Networks -- 3. Continuity and Distributed Networks -- 4 . The Holy Grail -- REFERENCES -- THE USE OF CONTINUITY IN MODELLING SEMANTIC PHENOMENA -- Introduction -- 1. Linguistic issues -- 1.1. Categorisation -- 1.2. Compositionality -- 1.3. Representation of meaning -- 2. Mathematical definitions.

2.1. Continuity versus discontinuity -- 2.2. Discreteness -- 2.3. Continuum -- 3. Modelling considerations -- 3.1 Qualitative modelling -- 3.2 Dynamical systems -- 3.3 General framework -- 4. Computer tools -- 4.1. Continuity on a digital computer -- 4.2. Connectionism -- 4.3. Current limits of connectionism -- REFERENCES -- INDEX.