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38536 results in Cambridge Textbooks

Page 1592 of 1927

  • 9 - Nonlinear representations

  • David Odden, Ohio State University
  • Book:
    Introducing Phonology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    28 November 2013, pp 285-322

  • Summary

    PREVIEW

    KEY TERMS

  • autosegmental phonology

  • tone stability

  • floating tone

  • across-the-board effects

  • feature geometry

  • syllable

    • This final chapter introduces an alternative model of how sounds are represented, the nonlinear theory. The purpose of this chapter is to show how troublesome facts can lead to a reconceptualization of a domain which seemed to be understood, leading to an even better understanding of the nature of language sounds. This will also help you to understand how and why theories change.

    The theoretical model we have been assuming – known as the linear theory of representation – was quite successful in explaining a number of facts about sound systems. An essential characteristic of the theory is that segments are matrices of feature values, where every segment has a specification for each of the two dozen distinctive features. There was one phonological realm which the theory had largely ignored, and that was tone, and that had significant repercussions.

    The autosegmental theory of tone: the beginnings of a change

    There were a few proposals regarding tone features, but they did not reach the degree of acceptance that those for other features reached. One of the primary problems regarding tone was how to represent contour tones such as rising and falling.

  • 7 - Phonological typology and naturalness

  • David Odden, Ohio State University
  • Book:
    Introducing Phonology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    28 November 2013, pp 205-236

  • Summary

    PREVIEW

    KEY TERMS

  • typology

  • crosslinguistic comparison

  • markedness

  • functional explanation

    • One of the main goals of many phonologists is to explain why certain phonological patterns are found in numerous languages, while other patterns are found in few or no languages. This chapter looks at phonological typology – the study of common versus uncommon phonological rules.

    A widely invoked criterion in deciding between analyses of a language is whether the rules of one analysis are more natural, usually judged in terms of whether the rules occur frequently across languages. As a prerequisite to explaining why some processes are common, uncommon, or even unattested, you need an idea of what these common patterns are, and providing such survey information is the domain of typology. While only a very small fraction of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken in the world have been studied in a way that yields useful information for phonological typology, crosslinguistic studies have revealed many recurrent patterns, which form the basis for theorizing about the reason for these patterns.

    Inventories

    A comparative, typological approach is often employed in the study of phonological segment inventories. It has been observed that certain kinds of segments occur in very many languages, while others occur in only a few. This observation is embodied in the study of markedness, which is the idea that not all segments or sets of segments or rules have equal status in phonological systems. For example, many languages have the stop consonants [p t k], a system that is said to be unmarked, but relatively few have the uvular [q], which is said to be marked. Markedness is a comparative concept, so [q] is more marked than [k] but less marked than [ʕ].

  • 2 - Allophonic relations

  • David Odden, Ohio State University
  • Book:
    Introducing Phonology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    28 November 2013, pp 15-38

  • Summary

    PREVIEW

    KEY TERMS

  • allophone

  • phoneme

  • complementary distribution

  • contrast

  • distinctive

    • This chapter begins the analysis of phonological processes. You will:

  • learn of predictable variants of basic sounds in English

  • learn about the concepts “phoneme” and “allophone”

  • discover that similar relations between sounds exist in other languages

  • begin to learn the general technique for inducing phonological rules from data that come from a language which you do not know

  • be introduced to writing phonological rules

    • As explained in the preceding chapter, the focus of phonology is the mental rules which govern the pronunciation of words in a given language. Certain facts about pronunciation simply cannot be predicted by rule, for example that in English the word sick is pronounced [sɪk] and sip is pronounced [sɪp]. Hence one fundamental component of a language is a lexicon, a list of words (or morphemes – parts of words), which must provide any information which cannot be predicted by rules of the language. However, much about the pronunciation of words can be predicted. For example, in the word tick the initial voiceless consonant t is phonetically aspirated, and is phonetically [thɪk]. This aspiration can be demonstrated visually by dangling a tissue in front of the mouth when saying the word: notice that when you pronounce t, the tissue is blown forward. In comparison, t in the word stick is not aspirated (thus, the tissue is not blown forward), so this word is transcribed as [stɪk]. This fact can be predicted by rule, and we now consider how this is done.

  • 7 - Immigrants and enclaves

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 154-184

  • Summary

    In addition to a worldwide flow of capital, ideas, and organizations, one distinguishing feature of globalization involves the extensive movement of people – temporarily, as tourists, students, and guest workers, and more permanently as immigrants. It is a world in motion, and the movement of people to and among global cities is especially pronounced, despite the risks that they frequently face in traveling and the hostile receptions that immigrants often face after they arrive at their destination.

    This chapter will focus in detail on the patterns of movement that are characteristic of immigrants, and the way they tend to assimilate partially and selectively rather than in total, as implied by the once popular melting pot theory. The final section of the chapter explores the variety of enclaves that immigrant groups have created. We also note that these enclaves have often become tourist attractions, in ways that alienate the residents.

    Immigrants and their routes

    Between 1990 and 2010, the number of international migrants in the world increased, on average, by about 3 million persons per year. By 2010, more than 3 percent of the world’s population was estimated to be living in a nation other than the one in which they were born. This overall figure masked enormous variations, however. In Australia and Canada, more than 20 percent were foreign born, and in the United States and most nations inWestern Europe the figure was between 10 percent and 15 percent.

  • 2 - Cities and city-regions in the world economy

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 21-42

  • Summary

    Saskia Sassen, a global city analyst who was introduced in Chapter 1, acknowledges that the global economy is often thought of as operating without reference to particular places – that is, as though a global system was a thing apart, separate, from human actions, that did not require any specific activities in concrete locales to sustain it. In fact, she argues, the global economy is embedded in a number of places, and its continued operation is vitally dependent on activities that are performed in these places. The most important of them, Sassen concludes, are cities, and their surrounding areas.

    An interesting visualization of the prominence of cities in the world was provided by an astronaut who, on a space flight, looked back at Earth and was surprised not to see any national boundaries. The landmass of the United States simply merged into Canada, Egypt flowed into Libya, and so on. In daylight, the only human artifact the astronaut could see from space was the Great Wall of China. The view at night was particularly interesting, from Sassen's vantage point, because the only visible signs of human life were the world's major urban areas, appearing as “pin-pricks of electric light on a black canvas.” From space, in other words, it was the world's urban settlements that were most apparent.

  • 4 - Postindustrial cities

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 69-96

  • Summary

    To produce the guns, tanks, planes, and other armament used on World War II battlefields, factories in the then leading industrial nations revved up their manufacturing capacities and converted them to wartime production. Plants that had made steel for kitchen appliances made bullets instead, factories that formerly produced tires for bicycles changed to making tires for army jeeps, and so on. For many of the factories it turned out to be their last hurrah because shortly after the war ended (in 1945) many were closed. Soon, entire industrial districts were boarded up.

    This chapter describes deindustrialization and its consequences and examines how cities responded to deindustrialization by trying to attract high-tech firms. Some succeeded, but many failed, and a lot of their urban neighborhoods began a long period of deterioration. We note how the downhill slide in some of these neighborhoods was halted by gentrification, but also note that such developments also led to the displacement of former residents who frequently had no desirable residential alternative.

  • 9 - Tourism and the experience economy

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 210-234

  • Summary

    Many parts of this book have stressed the view that dominant modes of production in an economy exert a strong influence on the form and organization of its cities. Thus, in prior chapters, preindustrial, industrial, and postindustrial eras were all seen to be associated with distinctive urban qualities. The most recent mode to emerge has been described as the production of an experience economy, and it relies on the ability of firms to create pleasant sensations and enjoyable memories for consumers. This sensory experience is now the product, or perhaps more accurately, this experience has replaced the product in providing the distinctive market contributon of a firm. To illustrate, consider the rapid growth of themed restaurants, such as Rainforest Café and Planet Hollywood. These are restaurants intentionally designed to provide an experience. They are more than places to dine. They resemble firms in an industrial era in that they frequently sell products, such as branded shirts and mugs. However, it is the totality of the experience they provide that they emphasize as the feature that most sets them apart from competitors.

    This chapter describes the distinguishing features of an experience economy. With regard to cities, and global cities in particular, one of the most important of those defining characteristics is an emphasis on tourism. We describe the large investments cities make to convince potential visitors that they have something special to offer them. We again note, however, that enhancing the tourist value of a place often works to the disadvantage of many local residents.

  • 8 - Global cities and global culture

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 185-209

  • Summary

    Beginning in the 1970s almost all of the first sustained writings on global cities strongly emphasized the economic ties among them and the economic basis of their global ordering. In various articles and books, analysts argued that the number and kinds of financial and commercial activities that occurred in any city determined where it stood among the leading cities of the world. More emphasis was later placed on relationships among cities rather than on what each contained, but it was economic relationships that continued to receive the most attention. (As an illustration, consider the rankings presented in Chapter 2.) The degree to which ideas, values, symbols, and cultural forms that permeated the world either originated in or were transmitted from a particular city was considered of little importance in its own right. The early world city theorists did not totally ignore the cultural realm. They were aware of it but considered it incoherent compared to the clarity of the economic realm. They argued that cultural manifestations typically lacked the concreteness and tangibility of their economic counterparts and were therefore very difficult to study. Cultural forms and their symbolic expressions appeared to be an “amorphous mist” that defied objective measurement.

    In fact, however, several ways of measuring the cultural standing of global cities have been developed, and we review them in this chapter (and in parts of the Chapter 9). We note that global city cultural rankings tend to be similar, but not identical, to the economic rankings presented in Chapter 2. We also examine the way the cultural and economic activities of global cities have become increasingly interconnected, both functionally and geographically.

  • 1 - Introduction

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 1-20

  • Summary

    This chapter introduces the sociological study of cities, describing how the emphases of urban sociologists have historically changed as cities grew in size and complexity, as the relations of cities to the geographical areas surrounding them expanded and grew stronger, and as their links to urban areas outside of their own nations became stronger. This introduction examines how cities are defined, both sociologically and officially, and also how the larger areas of which they are a part – metropolitan areas and global city-regions – are defined.

    In conjunction with enormous increases in world trade, beginning in the last decades of the twentieth century and continuing to the present, the global connections among city-regions grew in significance, and these city-regions became central points in the world economy. This chapter examines that increase and notes its implications for governing these expanded city-regions for which connections to their counterparts in other nations are often stronger than relations to city-regions within their own nations.

    Differentiating cities

    When the study of cities initially became a specialized subfield in sociology, early in the twentieth century, the focus of urban sociology was on how city life differed from life in the countryside. During the first part of the twentieth century, many settlements grew rapidly, and the emerging urban form was generating profound changes in social institutions. As analyzed by the major sociological theorists of the time, these institutional changes were altering the ways people interacted with each other and producing distinctive personalities within the residents of cities.

  • 6 - Income inequality

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 123-153

  • Summary

    From the time that analyses first began to catalog the distinguishing features of global cities, one of the most emphasized characteristics has been great differences in the wealth of the highest and lowest segments of their residents. Some designated this difference income inequality, others called it class polarization, and still others referred to global cities as dual cities. All were responding to essentially the same phenomenon, however. After several decades of substantial middle-class growth in the cities of most economically advanced nations, somewhere after about 1970, it was the highest and lowest classes that began to expand. As a result, urban observers hypothesized that the overall distribution of wealth, particularly in global cities, was moving toward the shape of an hourglass: wider at the top and bottom, pinched in the middle. Friedmann and Wolff, in one of the early landmark analyses of global cities, used the metaphors of the citadel and the ghetto to describe the expanding classes at the top and bottom. They selected these terms because they characterized not only different strata within a socioeconomic hierarchy, but also groupings that were spatially segregated from each other as well.

    There is, of course, nowhere other than a socialist utopia where everyone has an identical amount of whatever it is people value. Some differences in wealth, and in everything else, are ubiquitous. It is a very high degree of inequality in a city or nation that is associated with multiple and diverse social and political problems. For example, in several large cities in Latin America, studies have reported a correlation between the degree of inequality and the amount of kidnapping that occurs. Because the kidnappers are usually poor and their victims rich, ransom becomes, in effect, a means of redistributing income. Recent analyses also suggest that the greater the degree of income inequality in a nation, the greater the differences in how much overall satisfaction people express when they are asked how they feel about “their lives as a whole these days.” Some studies even contend that excessive inequality threatens social cohesion and political stability. Therefore, if the analysts are correct in viewing inequality as an essential feature of global cities, then as global forces more strongly incorporate a growing number of cities, growing inequality may portend serious and widespread social problems in the future.

  • 10 - A political overview

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 235-258

  • Summary

    Within any city or city-region, at any given time, there are typically a number of groups competing to influence decisions concerning where a new subway station or government office building is to be situated, which city residents will have first choice of subsidized apartments, and so on. These decisions are highly consequential with various groups standing to gain or lose from the decision, and this usually ensures that people will form coalitions to pursue their shared interests and that they will be opposed by other coalitions that prefer a different outcome. The growth of any city is, therefore, a work in process being continuously shaped by struggles whose eventual outcomes cannot be predicted with certainty. Cities are also, however, shaped by the constraints of external, macro forces such as the prevalent technology, dominant modes of production and corresponding divisions of labor, and so on.

    While recognizing that there is a complex interplay among diverse social forces, this chapter pays particular attention to the influence of conflicts and contested decisions. Specifically, we return to the previously discussed types of cities, select some of the distinctive developments associated with each, and then focus on the opposing groups that are likely to form and the ways in which the conflicts are typically resolved. Each section begins with a brief description of some of the most distinguishing characteristics of each type of city. This chapter has two objectives: (1) to provide the reader with a review of much of the previously introduced material and (2) to show how opposition and conflict typically help shape the growth and form of cities.

  • 5 - Postmodern urban theory

  • Mark Abrahamson
  • Book:
    Urban Sociology
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    25 November 2013, pp 97-122

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 described the development of modern industrial cities from an ecological perspective. That view, which predominated in urban sociology during the first half of the twentieth century – the same period in which manufacturing was shaping the growth of cities – emphasized how growth and change in a community of any type (plant, animal, human) were natural processes whose outcomes were not intended, or guided, by anyone. To review some previously discussed examples, the way cities grew was viewed as analogous to the rings of a tree, and rates of population growth established the width of the city's concentric zones as rainfall determined the circumference of tree rings. The central business district, to illustrate further, operated similarly to the nucleus of a cell, controlling growth throughout the community. Because it made little sense to attribute volition to cells or trees, these early urban analysts downplayed, or entirely disregarded, the role of human agency in determining where factories, office buildings, retail shops, or ethnic groups would be located.

    By contrast, the reader should have noted in Chapter 3 that analyses of the transformation of cities away from a manufacturing base were replete with references to people's profit motives and groups coming together to pursue common goals. Did this shift in focus imply that urban analysts believed that human nature somehow changed over the course of a half century, or so? Of course not. People's calculations were involved when the Carrier Corporation left New Jersey for Syracuse in 1937 as surely as they were involved when Carrier decided to move its refrigeration unit from Syracuse to China in 2003. What changed during this time interval were the paradigms, or theoretical models, that dominated urban theory and the different features they were inclined to emphasize. Every such model always calls attention to certain types of phenomena that it considers important to examine and that necessarily directs attention away from other things. In the case of human ecology, the Chicago School paradigm made clear the ways in which cities were like plant communities in the importance of location to all parts of the community; however, it did not encourage analyses of the ways in which they were different from plant communities – namely in the city's unique dependence on the deliberate actions of its components (i.e., people).

Page 1592 of 1927