In this book, Almerindo E. Ojeda offers a unique perspective on linguistics by discussing developing computer programs that will assign particular sounds to particular meanings and, conversely, particular meanings to particular sounds. Since these assignments are to operate efficiently over unbounded domains of sound and sense, they can begin to model the two fundamental modalities of human language—speaking and hearing. The computational approach adopted in this book is motivated by our struggle with one of the key problems of contemporary linguistics—figuring out how it is that language emerges from the brain.

Almerindo Ojeda is professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Davis, director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, and director of the Project for the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art.