A vivid, 'well-tempered' exploration of the foundations of psycholinguistics, combining theoretical ideas with lyrical examples to explain high-level ideas in a lively, accessible way.

In a work that is part memoir, part monograph, Nigel Duffield offers a set of lyrical reflections on theories of Psycholinguistics, which is concerned with how speakers use the languages they control, as well as with how such control is acquired in the first place. Written for professionals and enthusiastic amateurs alike, this book offers a 'well-tempered' examination of the conceptual and empirical foundations of the field. In developing his ideas, the author draws on thirty years of direct professional experience of psycholinguistic theory and practice, across various sub-disciplines, including theoretical linguistics, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and philology. The author's personal experience as a language learner - more importantly, as the father of three bilingual children - also plays a crucial role in shaping the discussion. Using examples from popular literature, song, poetry, and comedy, the work examines many of the foundational questions that divide researchers from different intellectual traditions: these include the nature of 'linguistic competence', the arbitrariness of language, and the theoretical implications of variation between speakers and across languages.

Words, Thoughts, and Theories articulates and defends the "theory theory" of cognitive and semantic development, the idea that infants and young children, like scientists, learn about the world by forming and revising theories, a view of the origins of knowledge and meaning that has broad implications for cognitive science. Gopnik and Meltzoff interweave philosophical arguments and empirical data from their own and other's research. Both the philosophy and the psychology, the arguments and the data, address the same fundamental epistemological question: How do we come to understand the world around us? Recently, the theory theory has led to much interesting research. However, this is the first book to look at the theory in extensive detail and to systematically contrast it with other theories. It is also the first to apply the theory to infancy and early childhood, to use the theory to provide a framework for understanding semantic development, and to demonstrate that language acquisition influences theory change in children.The authors show that children just beginning to talk are engaged in profound restructurings of several domains of knowledge. These restructurings are similar to theory changes in science, and they influence children's early semantic development, since children's cognitive concerns shape and motivate their use of very early words. But, in addition, children pay attention to the language they hear around them and this too reshapes their cognition, and causes them to reorganize their theories.

The two most popular titles by the noted linguist and critic in one volume—an ideal introduction to his work. On Language features some of Noam Chomsky’s most informal and highly accessible work. In Part I, Language and Responsibility, Chomsky presents a fascinating self-portrait of his political, moral, and linguistic thinking. In Part II, Reflections on Language, Chomsky explores the more general implications of the study of language and offers incisive analyses of the controversies among psychologists, philosophers, and linguists over fundamental questions of language. “Language and Responsibility is a well-organized, clearly written and comprehensive introduction to Chomsky’s thought.” —The New York Times Book Review “Language and Responsibility brings together in one readable volume Chomsky’s positions on issues ranging from politics and philosophy of science to recent advances in linguistic theory. . . . The clarity of presentation at times approaches that of Bertrand Russell in his political and more popular philosophical essays.” —Contemporary Psychology “Reflections on Language is profoundly satisfying and impressive. It is the clearest and most developed account of the case of universal grammar and of the relations between his theory of language and the innate faculties of mind responsible for language acquisition and use.” —Patrick Flanagan

Originally published in 1985, this title was an important new teaching text at the time. Alan Garnham focuses on current theories about the central cognitive aspects of language understanding, and attempts to reflect the emergence of cognitive science, an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of language and other cognitive processes. As well as describing psychological studies, the text includes ideas from linguistics, artificial intelligence, the philosophy of language and formal logic. Some introductory remarks on the study of language understanding precede a discussion of word recognition and the computation of the syntactic structure of sentences. The central part of the book is concerned with questions about meaning, the mental representation of word meanings, and text comprehension. The final two chapters address questions of how the parts of the language processing system operate together, and how language production is related to comprehension. Rather than attempting an exhaustive discussion of empirical research on his chosen topics, the author gives the reader the flavour of linguistic arguments. In particular, Psycholinguistics attempts to indicate the problems and also the possibilities of relating experimental data to theories of language processing. Psycholinguistics will still be useful reading on courses in psycholinguistics, language and thought, and cognitive psychology.