The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches To Language Structure, Volume II Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a welcome and clear-headed exposition of functional approaches to linguistics, from a lot of perspectives.
Here's the contents:
M. Tomasello -- Introduction to the Volume: Some Surprises for Psychologists.
L. Talmy -- Concept Structuring Systems in Language.
J. DuBois -- Discourse and Grammar.
S. Kemmer -- Human Cognition and the Elaboration of Events: Some Universal Conceptual Categories.
C. Ford, B. Fox, S. Thompson -- Social Interaction and Grammar.
J. Bybee -- Cognitive Processes in Grammaticalization.
K. van Hoek -- Pronouns and Point of View: Cognitive Principles of Coreference.
B. Comrie -- On Explaining Language Universals.
M. Haspelmath -- The Geometry of Grammatical Meaning: Semantic Maps and Crosslinguistic Comparison.
C. Fillmore, P. Kay, M.C. O'Connor -- Regularity and Idiomaticity in Grammatical Constructions: The Case of "Let Alone"
Amazon doesn't have editorial desdescription on this book, so I'll quote the publisher's blurb:
"From the point of view of psychology and cognitive science, much of modern linguistics is too formal and mathematical to be of much use. The newly emerging approaches to language termed "Functional and Cognitive Linguistics," however, are much less formally oriented. Instead, functional and cognitive approaches to language structure are typically couched in terms already familiar to cognitive scientists: perception, attention, conceptualization, meaning, symbols, categories, schemas, perspectives, discourse context, social interaction, and communicative goals.
The account of human linguistic competence emerging from this new paradigm should be extremely useful to scientists studying how human beings (not formal devices) comprehend, produce, and acquire natural languages. The current volume brings together 10 of the most important linguists in cognitive and functional linguistics whose work is often not easily available to those outside the field. In original contributions, each of these scholars focus on an important aspect of human linguistic competence, with a special eye to readers who are not professional linguists. Of special importance to all of the contributions are the cognitive and social interactional processes that constitute human linguistic communication. The book should be of special interest to psychologists, cognitive scientists, psycholinguists, and developmental psycholinguists, in addition to linguists taking a more psychological approach to language."

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From the point of view of psychology and cognitive science, much of modern linguistics is too formal and mathematical to be of much use. The newly emerging approaches to language termed, "Functional and Cognitive Linguistics," however, are much less formally oriented. Instead, functional and cognitive approaches to language structure are typically couched in terms already familiar to cognitive scientists: perception, attention, conceptualization, meaning, symbols, categories, schemas, perspectives, discourse context, social interaction, and communicative goals. The account of human linguistic competence emerging from this new paradigm should be extremely useful to scientists studying how human beings (not formal devices) comprehend, produce, and acquire natural languages. The current volume brings together 10 of the most important linguists in cognitive and functional linguistics whose work is often not easily available to those outside the field. In original contributions, each of these scholars focuses on an important aspect of human linguistic competence, with a special eye to readers who are not professional linguists. Of special importance to all of the contributions are the cognitive and social interactional processes that constitute human linguistic communication. The book is of special interest to psychologists, cognitive scientists, psycholinguists, and developmental psycholinguists, in addition to linguists taking a more psychological approach to language.

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The Neurocognition of Language Review

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(More customer reviews)I have had this book for several years now and find myself opening its pages a couple of times a year. I especially enjoy the modest and humble introduction stating that we know a lot, but have a lot more to learn regarding the brain and cognition. There is a interdisciplinary plea here to merge the cognitive neurosciences and linguistics and I believe for the most part a plea that is still unanswered till this day. Now with funding being cut for research I wonder when the neurosciences and linguistics/education proper will ever merge.
The book discusses how language is currently mapped in the brain and what this can inform. Techniques such as the fMRI is discussed linking its values as a research tool. You will learn about the basic principles of Haemodynamic imaging methods and the how/why they work based on observations made rooted in blood supply; and differences between PET and fMRI imaging. For a linguist representational structures of the language faculty are presented in light of interactions based on Chomskyan theories. I appreciated the discussion pertaining to the dimensions (short-term) and kinds (explicit/implicit) of memory.
The main sections, briefly, are as follows:
1.Introduction
Cognitive Neuroscience of Language
Neuro Imaging
Language Faculty
2.Cognitive Architecture of Languages
Spoken Language
Listening to Language
Written Language
3.Neurocognitive architecture of Language
Neural architecture of words
Clues to the functioning of words (neural architecture)
Neurocognition of syntactic processing
4.Language from a Neurobiological Perspective
Broca's Area
Imaging
Current Approaches to Mapping
This book is a gem and a well informed, well researched, volume addressing these sections as outlined above. For any serious linguist interested in cognition and/or the neurology of cognition based on what we knew in 2000. This book is highly relevant. Of course you will need to be updated with current academic literature via journals, but I think the age on this book is not relevant considering the breadth of fundamental time honored considerations it addresses. Excellent academic reference.


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The Neurocognition of Language is the first critical overview of the cognitive neuroscience of language, one of the fastest-moving and most exciting areas in language research today. And it is a necessity for anyone requiring a summary of our current understanding of the relation between language and the brain. It brings together human language experts who discuss the representations and structures of language as well as the cognitive architectures that underlie speaking, listening, and reading. In addition to valuable reviews of existing brain imaging literature on word and sentence processing and contributions from brain lesion data, this book provides a basis for future brain imaging research. It even explains the prospects and problems of brain imaging techniques for the study of language, presents some of the most recent and promising analytic procedures for relating brain imaging data to the higher cognitive functions, and contains a review of the neuroanatomical structure of Broca's language area. Uniquely interdisciplinary, this book offers researchers and students in cognitive neuroscience with state-of-the-art reviews of the major language functions, while being of equal interest to researchers in linguistics and language who want to learn about language's neural bases.

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Handbook of Psycholinguistics, Second Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)I must say, it is not a textbook in the proper sense, but an overview of current research; hard to penetrate for a novice. Very thorough.

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The Talking Ape: How Language Evolved (Studies in the Evolution of Language) Review

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(More customer reviews)Simultaneously a study in evolution, language, the human psyche, and the challenges of intellectual rigor, this wonderful book is a thoughtful, thought-provoking, and even startling conversation about how we came to be the talking ape. While the book includes careful treatment (and frequent overturning) of competing theories and controversies within the discipline of linguistics, Burling moves deftly beyond them to work pragmatically at his subject for a general audience. He thinks crisply and writes enjoyably, and demonstrates fluency and fluidity handling a variety of topics in evolutionary theory. The topic overall, and this book in particular, offers much and will be a surprisingly rich exploration to the curious reader.

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Humans never run out of things to say. We explain, we cajole, we gossip, and we flirt--all with the help of language. But how in the space of several million years did we evolve from an ordinary primate that that could not talk to the strange human primate that can't shut up? In this fascinating, thought-provoking book, Robbins Burling presents the most convincing account of the origins of language ever published, shedding new light on how speech affects the way we think, behave, and relate to each other, and offering us a deeper understanding of the nature of language itself. Burling argues that comprehension, rather than production, was the driving force behind the evolution of language--we could understand words before we could produce them. As he develops this insight, he investigates the first links between signs, sounds, and meanings and explores the beginnings of vocabulary and grammar. He explains what the earliest forms of communication are likely to have been, how they worked, and why they were deployed, suggesting that when language began it was probably much more dependent on words like "poke" or "whoosh," words whose sounds have a close association with what they refer to. Only gradually did language develop the immense vocabulary it has today. Burling also examines the qualities of mind and brain needed to support the operations of language and the selective advantages they offered those able to use them. Written in a crystal-clear style, constantly enlivened by flashes of wit and humor, here is the definitive account on the birth of language.

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Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics Review

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(More customer reviews)Nei and Kumar's "Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics" is basically an updated version of Nei's 1987 "Molecular Evolutionary Genetics" book. Accordingly, attention is shifted to reviewing many recent advances in methods of phylogenetic inference with an obvious bias towards distance methods, particularly those which the senior author devised. In fairness, they give decent coverage to the more popular parsimony and likelihood methods as well. The great strength of the book is the number of real examples used to illustrate properties of the methods, and their focus on statistical methodology without miring the reader in detailed mathematics. The disappointment is that while breadth of coverage is tolerable, depth is lacking. Expanding their views on the shortcomings of likelihood in choosing tree topology and likelihood ratio-tests in choosing models of sequence evolution would have been most enlightening, particularly as these issues have been brushed lightly aside by phylo-likelihoodists. Other methods (Hadamard transformations, Bayesian phylogenetic inference) were absent altogether. Further the chapter on molecular clocks was disappointing--old 1980s controversies were rehashed, while there was nothing on methods that relax the assumption of rate constancy while still allowing divergences to be dated. Admittedly some of this is very new and research is ongoing, but there isn't even a hint of these developments in this chapter. Another plus though is the addition of a chapter on inferring ancestral states of molecular sequences.
Unlike Molecular Evolutionary Genetics, far too little of the book is devoted to methods at the population level, and what is there again smacks of state-of-the-art 15-20 years ago. I was hoping for much more coverage of microsatellite and AFLP data. There was very little for either, while now rarely-used RFLPs were given extensive coverage.
In short, this book was too short, particularly for the price, and I almost gave it 3 stars rather than 4. However, if you are a phylogeneticist, you will probably want to have this book on your shelf. A lighter introduction for the uninitiated would be Rod Page's "Molecular Evolution" or Graur and Li's "Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution". However, my hopes for a good comprehensive text and reference on phylogenetic methods now rest on publication of Joseph Felsenstein's "Inferring Phylogenies".

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During the last ten years, remarkable progress has occurred in the study of molecular evolution. Among the most important factors that are responsible for this progress are the development of new statistical methods and advances in computational technology. In particular, phylogenetic analysis of DNA or protein sequences has become a powerful tool for studying molecular evolution. Along with this developing technology, the application of the new statistical and computational methods has become more complicated and there is no comprehensive volume that treats these methods in depth. Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics fills this gap and present various statistical methods that are easily accessible to general biologists as well as biochemists, bioinformatists and graduate students. The text covers measurement of sequence divergence, construction of phylogenetic trees, statistical tests for detection of positive Darwinian selection, inference of ancestral amino acid sequences, construction of linearized trees, and analysis of allele frequency data. Emphasis is given to practical methods of data analysis, and methods can be learned by working through numerical examples using the computer program MEGA2 that is provided.

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Language and the Brain (Cambridge Approaches to Linguistics) Review

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(More customer reviews)Overview:
I read this book as part of an in-depth research project on language processing for an introduction to neuroscience class. I was highly disappointed in the use of content based solely on behavioral studies rather than imaging studies and the poor organization of information being presented. Although the focus is based on behavioral case studies as support for its findings, very little of the claims are grounded in quantitative imaging data. While the authors of Language and the Brain wrote the book in 1999 when this field was less commonly used than it is now, the glossing-over of this technology and its importance to the field of neurolinguistics is disappointing. Updated editions of this book are necessary in order to fully describe neurolinguistics and how the brain permits us to have language
Synopsis of Parts:
The first three chapters briefly introduce neurolinguistics and its subparts phonology, morphology, syntax, discourse, and semantics; the general localizationism or connectionism approaches to studying neurolinguistics; an introduction to the brain and nervous system important for linguistic study, and a brief overview of the methods for brain analysis including imaging but with a large focus on history. These descriptions are fairly simple and easy to understand - one of the authors' goals for the book outlined in the preface.

The subsequent three chapters on aphasia proceed to try and describe the different types of language disorders due to brain injury. They begin with aphasia classifications including accounts of Broca's research on the ability to produce speech, Wernicke's research on the ability to understand speech, and conduction aphasia, the ability to repeat spoken language. In the next chapter, it develops the underlying causes for each of these patterns and links them to a particular brain area that, when damaged, results in the deficit. Then the book describes the study of children with developmental language disorders in order to investigate the syntactic abilities of the left hemisphere, but claims that they are "hard to evaluate in terms of brain regions because the nature of brain malfunction is rarely, if ever, clear." Finally, the book discusses right brain damage, in order to investigate how it participates in the perception or production of language.
The next group of chapters outlines other language issues not associated with brain injury like the loss of language due to dementia, difficulties with reading known as dyslexia or alexia, and issues with writing knows as dysgraphia.
Finally the books describe other aspects of language and the brain including bilingualism and the interactions between two or more languages in processing; language organization including in-depth discussions of phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and semantics; and, finally, the future of neurolinguistics including artificial intelligence, the relationship between language and cognition, and brain imaging.
Style and Structure:
The authors of the book focused on case studies of patients and their brain lesions, or damage areas, to explain their behaviors in most of the highlighted studies. It is much more of a discussion on linguistics and the brain areas associated with the various aspects of linguistics than it is an exploration of language processing.
Specific Opinions:
This book opens under the pretense that it's dealing with the study of neurolinguistics, or "how the brain (neuro) permits us to have language(linguistics)". In the preface the authors claim, "We assume that many readers of this volume will not have such a background, and thus we chose to focus, in the majority of chapters, on the special populations who provide us with knowledge of language organization in the brain." However the case study methods only deal with lesion patients and their language behavior with little attention to the quantitative fMRI or ERP data.
As a neuroscience student, I read the book in hopes of gaining insight into language processing and the relationship to not only brain areas, but also brain functionality. The localizationism approach in this book using the case study method provides ample support for which areas of the brain are associated with the different types of language disorders, but provides almost no insight into the aspects of processing other than timing, or how the brain really permits us to have language. While the individual region of the brain that contribute to language are important, the interaction and integration of these parts that allows us to speak, write, read, and comprehend language is what interested me in neurolinguistics in the first place and led me to reading this book.
The organization of "Language and the Brain" also contributed to my disappointment. In the introduction, the authors claim that neurolinguistics is often subcategorized into the areas of phonology, morphology, syntax, discourse, and semantics. These concepts, while referenced throughout the book, are not fully developed until the penultimate chapter, Language Organization, right before the discussion of the future of linguistics. As I read the Language and the Brain, I was often confused frustrated with its use of terms that weren't explained until the end of the book, if ever.
Overall I would not recommend Language and the Brain to other readers. It is outdated, disorganized, and, in my opinion, does not accomplish the goals it sets out to achieve in the preface. It adequately describes the areas associated with language function by highlighting the behavioral studies associated with damage and processing. These case studies and discussions on the types of language disorders may provide useful information for the study of linguistics, but they do so from more of a psycholinguistic perspective than a neurolinguistic one.
Readers should look elsewhere for information about how the brain allows us to have language. Many advancements in understanding in this field have been achieved through the use of imaging techniques such as Event Related Potential (ERP) recordings which allow temporal analysis and fMRI recordings which allow spatial analysis of brain activity but little mention of those techniques and none of the evidence that they provide are included in this text. To be useful in the current study of neurolinguistics, the authors should consider printing updated editions to include more details on the use and findings of newer technologies rather than continuing subsequent printings of this book.

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How do our brains enable us to speak creatively and build up an understanding of language?This accessible book examines the linguistic and neuro-anatomical underpinnings of language and considers how language skills can systematically break down in individuals with different types of brain damage. By studying children with language disorders, adults with right-hemisphere brain damage, demented patients and people with reading problems, the authors provide an understanding of how language is organized in the brain.

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Genes, Peoples, and Languages Review

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(More customer reviews)Cavalli-Sforza's invaluable contribution to the understanding of why, before the more recent diasporas, we lived were we lived, spoke what we spoke and looked like what we looked like, was made concrete with the publication, in 1994, of the excellent "The History and Geography of Human Genes". Much less complete than this book were the more recent "The Great Human Diasporas" and Sforza's last book, "Genes, Peoples and Languages". These somewhat summarize what can be found in the pages of "The History and Geography of Human Genes", by the same author,with which they share several maps and tables.
Nevertheless, "Genes, Peoples and Languages" was worth reading, since it incorporates more recent genetic data and linguistic research, and this is what you are looking for if you want to keep up with the advances in this field. A more comprehensive explanation to statistical methods used to define genetic trees and to draw principal component maps, plus an interesting chapter on cultural transmission explaining how, in the microsphere, it helps to operate genetic and linguistic evolution, are novelties in this publication.
Putting aside race and its seemingly subjective definitions, racism and its definetely scientifically undermined fundaments, I would like to recommend this book to those who, like myself, are curious laymen fascinated by the matter of human biological and cultural origins. A more thorough approach to the subject(more maps, tables, trees, drawings and text)you'll find in "The History and Geography of Human Genes, though.

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Structuralism and Since: From Lévi-Strauss to Derrida (Opus Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)Structuralism was a popular means of studying literature in the early and mid twentieth century, eclipsed larged by deconstruction. As a method, however, structuralism seems far more serious and articulate than its successor.
This is the best overview of structuralism ever. I initially found it in the library, and after reading it thoroughly, determined it was a book necessary for my own library. I found it compelling on a number of fronts, from figurative fiction to solipsistic fiction, and on most other fronts as well.
Sadly, most English departments have "moved on" to deconstruction, having abandoned structuralism to the dust heap of analysis. All the work of de Saussure, Barthes, and others have simply been deposed. Still, there's more merit in this one book than all the books written on deconstruction.
The reader is asked to examine texts in a peculiar way that serves both atemporality as well as temporality. The reader is shown ways to "structuralize" texts so that they may reveal yet further meaning. It's a valuable lesson, the life of which has sadly been dethroned of late.

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Provides an overview of the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida.

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Phonology and Language Use (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics) Review

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(More customer reviews)After decades of theories built upon painfully abstract argumentation, here is an approach to language that fits how we actually use it--and with how we learn, master, and play with much of what we do in life (vision, music, work, sports, etc.). Chomskian structuralist linguistics treats language as if it were some mysterious coding machine, completely unlike other cognitive, purpose-driven human activities. In go concepts and noises; deep inside the black machine, its gears and rules and constraints turn and whir; then out come the utterances of English or Asmat or Vietnamese (depends on which "machine" we have). And once we get our machines, we're stuck with them--they don't evolve. Each machine/language has its own set of rules, and only elite linguists understand them.
Like cognitive linguistics, Bybee's usage-based approach treats our use of language as very much like our uses of other skills. As with other skills, fluency comes through frequent practice. Many other parts of the UB approach also seem obvious or "common sense," and Bybee excels at making their explanatory force clear. This approach is still new, and still developing, but it looks like it has a LOT of potential for future research--not just in phonology, but also in morphology, syntax, and in grammaticalization (and other studies of diachronic language change).

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Referencing new developments in cognitive and functional linguistics, phonetics, and connectionist modeling, this book investigates various ways in which a speaker/hearer's experience with language affects the representation of phonology. Rather than assuming phonological representations in terms of phonemes, Joan Bybee adopts an exemplar model, in which specific tokens of use are stored and categorized phonetically with reference to variables in the context.This model allows an account of phonetically gradual sound change that produces lexical variation, and provides an explanatory account of the fact that many reductive sound changes affect high frequency items first.

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Elements of Acoustic Phonetics Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a major achievement from the pedagogical point of view.
For instance, Discrete Fourier Transform basic principles are clearly explained in chapter 10 using intuitive arguments (correlation and orthogonality). The same happens with other tough subjects for those studying acoustic phonetics, like LPC (chapter 11). And some explanations come with simple algorithms, intended to illustrate what is being discussed.
But, on the other side, the book has some (minor) flaws:
in chapter 2, p. 18, the author gives the simple pendulum as an example of a system where frequency of oscillation is independent of the initial conditions (in this case, the initial displacement angle). This is wrong. It is approximately correct just for small angles. For angles close to 90 degrees, the error comes close to 18%;
chapter 6 does one of the most common (and, therefore, one that should not be present in a book for beginners) mistakes in acoustics: taking sound power instead of sound pressure when talking about loudness;
there is an excessive number of typos in chapter 11.
But apart from that (which makes me give it 4 instead of 5 stars) it is an excellent start for students or professionals (my case), either from linguistics, engineering (my case) or medical sciences, in need for an introduction to this fascinating subject.

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This revised and expanded edition of a classic textbook provides a concise introduction to basic concepts of acoustics and digital speech processing that are important to linguists, phoneticians, and speech scientists. The second edition includes four new chapters that cover new experimental techniques in acoustic phonetics made possible by the use of computers. Assuming no background in physics or mathematics, Ladefoged explains concepts that must be understood in using modern laboratory techniques for acoustic analysis, including resonances of the vocal tract and the relation of formants to different cavities; digital speech processing and computer storage of sound waves; and Fourier analysis and Linear Predictive Coding, the equations used most frequently in the analysis of speech sounds. Incorporating recent developments in our knowledge of the nature of speech, Ladefoged also updates the original edition's discussion of the basic properties of sound waves; variations in loudness, pitch, and quality of speech sounds; wave analysis; and the hearing and production of speech.Like its predecessor, this edition of Elements of Acoustic Phonetics will serve as an invaluable textbook and reference for students and practitioners of linguistics and speech science, and for anyone who wants to understand the physics of speech.

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