LINGUIST List 13.2382

Fri Sep 20 2002

Books: Theoretical Linguistics: Anderson/Lightfoot

Editor for this issue: Tomoko Okuno <tomokolinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Joyce Reid, Anderson & Lightfoot: Theoretical Linguistics

Cambridge University Press
 http://www.cup.org/language


The Language Organ
Linguistics as Cognitive Physiology

Stephen R. Anderson, Yale University
David W. Lightfoot, Georgetown University, Washington DC

"A superb overview of the logic of language and its basis in the human
mind." 
--Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology, MIT and author of The
Language Instinct and Words and Rules

This study treats human language as the manifestation of a faculty of
the mind, which is seen as a mental organ whose nature is determined
by human biology and whose functional properties should be explored as
physiology explores the functional properties of physical organs. The
book surveys the nature of the language faculty in its various
aspects: the systems of sounds, words, and syntax, the development of
language in the child and historically, what is known about its
relation to the brain.

Contents:

Introduction
1. Studying the human language faculty 
2. Language as amental organ 
3. Syntax
4. Sound patterns to language
5. Describing linguistic knowledge
6. Phonetics and the I-linguistics of speech
7. Morphology
8. Language change
9. 'Growing' a language
10. The organic basis of language

2002/284 pp./2 halftones
052180994-0/Hb/List: $65.00
052100783-6/Pb/List: $24.00