Perspectives On Language And Thought

This book presents current observational and experimental research on the links between thought and language in such children.

Much of the groundbreaking work in many fields is now occurring at the intersection of traditional academic disciplines. This development is well demonstrated in this important and unique volume, which offers a multidisciplinary view of current findings and cutting-edge issues involving the relationship between mind, brain, and language. Marie T. Banich and Molly Mack have edited a collection of 11 invited chapters from top researchers (and have contributed two of their own chapters) to create a volume organized around five major topics--language emergence, influence, and development; models of language and language processing; the neurological bases of language; language disruption and loss; and dual-language systems. Topics range from the evolution of language and child-language acquisition to brain imaging and the "bilingual brain." To maintain continuity throughout, care has been taken to ensure that the chapters have been written in a style accessible to scholars across many disciplines, from anthropology and psycholinguistics to cognitive science and neurobiology. Because of its depth and breadth, this book is appropriate both as a textbook in a variety of undergraduate and graduate-level courses and as a valuable resource for researchers and scholars interested in further understanding the background of and current developments in our understanding of the mind/brain/language relationship.

The idea that the language we speak influences the way we think has evoked perennial fascination and intense controversy. According to the strong version of this hypothesis, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after the American linguists who propounded it, languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world, and the structure of one's language influences how one understands the world. Thus speakers of different languages perceive the world differently. Although the last two decades have been marked by extreme skepticism concerning the possible effects of language on thought, recent theoretical and methodological advances in cognitive science have given the question new life. Research in linguistics and linguistic anthropology has revealed striking differences in cross-linguistic semantic patterns, and cognitive psychology has developed subtle techniques for studying how people represent and remember experience. It is now possible to test predictions about how a given language influences the thinking of its speakers. Language in Mind includes contributions from both skeptics and believers and from a range of fields. It contains work in cognitive psychology, cognitive development, linguistics, anthropology, and animal cognition. The topics discussed include space, number, motion, gender, theory of mind, thematic roles, and the ontological distinction between objects and substances. Contributors Melissa Bowerman, Eve Clark, Jill de Villiers, Peter de Villiers, Giyoo Hatano, Stan Kuczaj, Barbara Landau, Stephen Levinson, John Lucy, Barbara Malt, Dan Slobin, Steven Sloman, Elizabeth Spelke, and Michael Tomasello

Irony in Language and Thought assembles an interdisciplinary collection of seminal empirical and theoretical papers on irony in language and thought into one comprehensive book. A much-needed resource in the area of figurative language, this volume centers on a theme from cognitive science - that irony is a fundamental way of thinking about the human experience. The editors lend perspective in the form of opening and closing chapters, which enable readers to see how such works have furthered the field, as well as to inspire present and future scholars. Featured articles focus on the following topics: theories of irony, addressing primarily comprehension of its verbal form context in irony comprehension social functions of irony the development of irony understanding situational irony. Scholars and students in psychology, linguistics, philosophy, literature, anthropology, artificial intelligence, art, and communications will consider this book an excellent resource. It serves as an ideal supplement in courses that present major ideas in language and thought.

Our ability to speak, write, understand speech and read is critical to our ability to function in today's society. As such, psycholinguistics, or the study of how humans learn and use language, is a central topic in cognitive science. This comprehensive handbook is a collection of chapters written not by practitioners in the field, who can summarize the work going on around them, but by trailblazers from a wide array of subfields, who have been shaping the field of psycholinguistics over the last decade. Some topics discussed include how children learn language, how average adults understand and produce language, how language is represented in the brain, how brain-damaged individuals perform in terms of their language abilities and computer-based models of language and meaning. This is required reading for advanced researchers, graduate students and upper-level undergraduates who are interested in the recent developments and the future of psycholinguistics.

The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning brings together the contributions of many of the leading researchers in thinking and reasoning to create the most comprehensive overview of research on thinking and reasoning that has ever been available.

Language issues are intrinsically part of every classroom setting. Therefore, there is a need to present the linguistic perspective to all teachers and teachers-in-training. This perspective assumes that a complex system is learned by children at an early age with little conscious instruction. It recognizes that languages change over time and that variation, based on region, ethnic identity, gender, social class, and social context, is inherent to language. Focusing more on the practical than the theoretical, Barry aims to engage teachers and education students in discussion of the relevance of linguistics to teaching and to encourage them to bring their own expertise to the discussion. Based on the research of scholars in linguistics and related disciplines, Barry's volume helps teachers synthesize some of the foundations of classic linguistic study with important, current findings. She starts by acquainting the reader with fundamentals of linguistics, then she moves on to discussions of teaching grammar and the history of English orthography. An entire chapter is devoted to the process of child language acquisition and another to the obstacles that some people face when attempting to learn a language. The work concludes with pieces on language policies and language literacy. Group exercises and suggested projects are included to facilitate the exchange between linguistics and education. The book is a must for those interested in the fundamental role of language in education.

The first international volume on the topic of biosemiotics and linguistics. It aims to establish a new relationship between linguistics and biology as based on shared semiotic foundation.