The Language Organ: Linguistics as Cognitive Physiology

Description

Challenging and original, The Language Organ treats human language as the manifestation of a faculty of the mind, a mental organ whose nature is determined by human biology and whose functional properties should be explored just as physiology explores the functional properties of physical organs. It 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, and what is known about its relation to the brain. It discusses the kinds of work that can be carried out in these areas that will contribute to an understanding of the human language organ. This book will appeal to students and researchers in linguistics, and is written to be accessible to colleagues in other disciplines dealing with language as well as to readers with an interest in general science and the nature of the human mind.

STEPHEN R. ANDERSON is Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Yale University. He is the author of The Organization of Phonology (1974), Phonology in the Twentieth Century (1985), and A-Morphous Morphology (Cambridge, 1992). DAVID W. LIGHTFOOT is Dean of the Graduate School, Georgetown University. He is the author of eight books, most recently The Development of Language (1999).

'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