Abstract This thesis compares the political processes and parties of the United States to that of the much younger and quite differently structured Israeli nation. The paper discusses the synchronic as well as the diachronic aspects of the two political systems and discusses the parallel purposes for which both political entities are structured.
Table of Contents
Historic Comparisons, U. S. vs. Israeli Structures
Current Political Structures in U.S. and Israel
Conclusions and Summary
From the Paper "The thesis of the first subordinate comparison is to show the historic significance and structural differences between the political structure in the United States verses the political structure of Israel. This becomes an imperative as both nations essentially were formed to sever their ties to British Colonial Rule albeit in different centuries and under differing degrees of historic developments and circumstances."
Abstract This academic paper examines contemporary linguistic theory, with a focus on grammaticalization in the development of language. This analysis is made for both language form and in acquisition by individuals. The author challenges the idea that language is structural. The paper addresses this issue by evaluating ideas that view grammaticalization as an epiphenomenon of language.
Outline
Abstract
Introduction
Epiphenomenon
Grammaticalization Defined
Grammaticalization as Epiphenominon
Works Cited
From the Paper "In a sense the epiphenomenon of grammaticalization, as many would claim is the psychological response to the neurologically fixed brain functioning that creates workable mental shortcuts through the utilization of commonly occurring rules that are unique to individual languages and to some extent people. The brain functions to save the individual undue work in forming language, when common rules are oft repeated and in so doing, as the theory goes it leaves the individual capable of the creation of language in an easy almost non-thinking manner. (Anderson, and Lightfoot 162) Yet, when an individual attempts, once these shortcuts have been set, to learn a unique language, a variation of ones own language, say modern English as compared to Middle English or even the English spoken in another country in the present world, he or she is stymied by these shortcuts as they would need to be eradicated or altered (which theory claims is difficult if not impossible to do) to think in and become fluent in another language. (Healy 3)"
Abstract This paper explains that Claude Levy-Strauss in his book "The Structural Study of Myth" breaks down myths structurally into four themes. The paper then describes the way that Strauss uses his algorithm to interpret any story through a prescribed matrix. The writer relates that she took a few stories and applied Claude Levy-Strauss' technique to them with excellent results; however, she does question the value of his specific four themes and in analyzing myths in this structural fashion.
From the Paper "What Strauss is doing is similar in practice to what a number of the other writers that we have already covered have tried to do. It is another type of analysis in which we're taking something that's essentially abstract (myth) and trying to apply concrete algorithms to it. With that in mind, I immediately have some level of skepticism. Putting that aside for a moment though, I do see quite a bit of validity in Levy-Strauss is technique in that it does successfully manage to take abstract concepts and organize them structurally."
