This book constitutes a timely contribution to the existing literature
by presenting a relatively comprehensive, neurobiological account of
certain aspects of second language acquisition. It represents the
collaborative efforts of members of the Neurobiology of Language
Research Group in the Applied Linguistics and TESL Department at UCLA.
Members of the group are trained in neurobiology and then use this
knowledge to develop biological accounts of various aspects of applied
linguistics.
The volume avoids the corticocentric bias that characterizes many
brain-language publications--both cortical and subcortical structures
receive their appropriate attention. In addition, it demonstrates that
enough is presently known about the brain to inform our
conceptualizations of how humans acquire second languages, thus, it
provides a refreshingly novel, highly integrative contribution to the
(second) language acquisition literature.
Is native speaker variation in understanding complex sentences due to
individual differences in working memory capacity or in syntactic
competence? The answer to this question has very important consequences
for both theoretical and applied concerns in linguistics and education.
This book is distinctive in giving an historical and interdisciplinary
perspective on the rule- based and experience-based debate and in
supporting an integrated account. In the study reported here, variation
was found to be due to differences in syntactic competence and the
author argues that sentence comprehension is a learned skill,
displaying many of the general characteristics of cognitive skills. The
book will be stimulating reading for psycholinguists, theoretical
linguists, applied linguists and educators.
The Blackwell History of the Latin Language charts the development of
Latin from its prehistoric origins in the Indo-European language
family, through the earliest texts, to the creation of the Classical
Language of Cicero and Vergil, and examines the impact of the spread of
spoken Latin through the Roman Empire. Accessible and intelligent, this
is the first book in English in more than 50 years to provide
comprehensive coverage of the history of the language.
This is a very approachable introduction to the description and classification of the sounds of speech – not only the sounds of English , but all the various sound-types represented in the Chart of the International Phonetic Association (IPA) .
Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives is
an up-to-date survey of recent research in Cognitive Linguistics and
its applications by prominent researchers. The volume brings together
generally accessible syntheses and special studies of Cognitive
Linguistics strands in a sizable format and is thus an asset not only
to the Cognitive Linguistics community, but also to neighbouring
disciplines and linguists in general. The volume covers a wide range of
fields and combines wide accessibility with a highly specific
information value.
Key features:
- An excellent source for the study of Applied Cognitive Linguistics,
one of the most popular and fastest growing areas in Linguistics.
- Authoritative and detailed survey articles by leading scholars in the field.
- Accessible to a general audience, yet also characterized by a highly specific information value.
Cognitive Linguistics, the branch of linguistics that tries to "make one's account of human language accord with what is generally known about the mind and the brain," has become one of the most flourishing fields of contemporary linguistics. The chapters address many classic topics of Cognitive Linguistics. These topics include studies on the semantics of specific words (including polysemy and synonymy) as well as semantic characteristics of particular syntactic patterns / constructions (including constructional synonymy and the schematicity of constructions), the analysis of causatives, transitivity, and image-schematic aspects of posture verbs.
