Language Production And Interpretation Linguistics Meets Cognition

An utterance is normally produced by a speaker in linear time and the hearer normally correctly identifies the speaker intention in linear time and incrementally. This is hard to understand in a standard competence grammar since languages are highly ambiguous and context-free parsing is not linear. Deterministic utterance generation from intention and n-best Bayesian interpretation, based on the production grammar and the prior probabilities that need to be assumed for other perception do much better. The proposed model uses symbolic grammar and derives symbolic semantic representations, but treats interpretation as just another form of perception. Removing interpretation from grammar is not only empirically motivated, but also makes linguistics a much more feasible enterprise. The importance of Henk Zeevat's new monograph cannot be overstated. Its combination of breadth, formal rigor, and originality is unparalleled in work on the form-meaning interface in human language...Zeevat's is the first proposal which provides a computationally feasible integrated treatment of production and comprehension for pragmatics, semantics, syntax, and even phonology. I recommend it to anyone who combines interests in language, logic, and computation with a sense of adventure. David Beaver, University of Texas at Austin

This volume represents major research issues in language production today, presenting readers with a picture of the breadth of current research in the field. Contributors have focused on models of visual word processing, aphasic speech, object recognition and language production in children. Many chapters highlight the need for psychological models of language production to learn from theoretical linguistics in order to become better informed about the structure of language itself. Therefore, this volume also includes chapters written by linguists for psychologists which serve to remind us of the complexity of structure and process in the languages of the world.

Pointing has captured the interest of scholars from various fields who study communication. However, ideas and findings have been scattered across diverse publications in different disciplines, and opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange have been very limited. The editor's aim is to provide an arena for such exchange by bringing together papers on pointing gestures from disciplines, such as developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, sign-language linguistics, linguistic anthropology, conversational analysis, and primatology. Questions raised by the editors include: *Do chimpanzees produce and comprehend pointing gestures in the same way as humans? *What are cross-cultural variations of pointing gestures? *In what sense are pointing gestures human universal? *What is the relationship between the development of pointing and language in children? *What linguistic roles do pointing gestures play in signed language? *Why do speakers sometimes point to seemingly empty space in front of them during conversation? *How do pointing gestures contribute to the unfolding of face-to-face interaction that involves objects in the environment? *What are the semiotic processes that relate what is pointed at and what is actually "meant" by the pointing gesture (the relationship between the two are often not as simple as one might think)? *Do pointing gestures facilitate the production of accompanying speech? The volume can be used as a required text in a course on gestural communication with multidisciplinary perspectives. It can also be used as a supplemental text in an advanced undergraduate or graduate course on interpersonal communication, cross-cultural communication, language development, and psychology of language.

The relationship between language and psychology is one that has been studied for centuries. Influencing one another, these two fields uncover how the human mind's processes are interrelated. Psycholinguistics and Cognition in Language Processing is a critical scholarly resource that examines the mystery of language and the obscurity of psychology using innovative studies. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics, such as language acquisition, emotional aspects in foreign language learning, and speech learning model, this book is geared towards linguists, academicians, practitioners, and researchers, seeking current research on the cognitive and emotional synthetisation of multilingualism.

Psycholinguistics – the field of science that examines the mental processes and knowledge structures involved in the acquisition, comprehension, and production of language – had a strong monolingual orientation during the first four decades following its emergence around 1950. The awareness that a large part of mankind speaks more than one language – that this may impact both on the way each individual language is used and on the thought processes of bilinguals and multilinguals, and that, consequently, our theories on human linguistic ability and its role in non-linguistic cognition are incomplete and, perhaps, false – has led to a steep growth of studies on bilingualism and multilingualism since around 1995. This textbook introduces the reader to the field of study that examines language acquisition, comprehension and production from the perspective of the bilingual and multilingual speaker. It furthermore provides an introduction to studies that investigate the implications of being bilingual on various aspects of non-linguistic cognition. The major topics covered are the development of language in children growing up in a bilingual environment either from birth or relatively soon after, late foreign language learning, and word recognition, sentence comprehension, speech production, and translation processes in bilinguals. Furthermore, the ability of bilinguals and multilinguals to generally produce language in the "intended" language is discussed, as is the cognitive machinery that enables this. Finally, the consequences of bilingualism and multilingualism for non-linguistic cognition and findings and views regarding the biological basis of bilingualism and multilingualism are presented. The textbook’s primary readership are students and researchers in Cognitive Psychology, Linguistics, and Applied Linguistics, but teachers of language and translators and interpreters who wish to become better informed on the cognitive and biological basis of bilingualism and multilingualism will also benefit from it.

In this book, Pieter Seuren presents a radically new perspective on the study of linguistic meaning, the place of logic in language and the embedding of language in cognition. Throughout his ambitious enterprise, he maintains a constant dialogue with established views, reflecting on their development from Ancient Greece to the present.

Cognitive Linguistics is not a unified theory of language but rather a set of flexible and mutually compatible theoretical frameworks. This volume is of interest to scholars and students wishing to inform themselves about the state and possible future developments of Cognitive Linguistics

Methods in Cognitive Linguistics is an introduction to empirical methodology for language researchers. Intended as a handbook to exploring the empirical dimension of the theoretical questions raised by Cognitive Linguistics, the volume presents guidelines for employing methods from a variety of intersecting disciplines, laying out different ways of gathering empirical evidence. The book is divided into five sections. Methods and Motivations provides the reader with the preliminary background in scientific methodology and statistics. The sections on Corpus and Discourse Analysis, and Sign Language and Gesture describe different ways of investigating usage data. Behavioral Research describes methods for exploring mental representation, simulation semantics, child language development, and the relationships between space and language, and eye movements and cognition. Lastly, Neural Approaches introduces the reader to ERP research and to the computational modeling of language.