The Handbook of Language Emergence (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1118301757 ISBN 13: 9781118301753

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015

Synopsis

This authoritative handbook explores the latest integrated theory for understanding human language, offering the most inclusive text yet published on the rapidly evolving emergentist paradigm.

• Brings together an international team of contributors, including the most prominent advocates of linguistic emergentism
• Focuses on the ways in which the learning, processing, and structure of language emerge from a competing set of cognitive, communicative, and biological constraints
• Examines forces on widely divergent timescales, from instantaneous neurolinguistic processing to historical changes and language evolution
• Addresses key theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues, making this handbook the most rigorous examination of emergentist linguistic theory ever

About this title

About the Author

Brian MacWhinney is Professor of Psychology, Computational Linguistics, and Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. He has published extensively over many decades, and developed the Competition Model of first- and second-language acquisition, processing, and disorders, which shows how language learning emerges from forces operating on lexically-based patterns across divergent timeframes. He is the author of The CHILDES project: Tools for Analyzing Talk, 3rd Edition (2000 and editor of Mechanisms of Language Acquisition (1987) and The Emergence of Language (1999).

William O’Grady is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii. He has undertaken extensive research in syntax and language acquisition, focusing more recently on the importance of processing for an understanding of how language works and how it is acquired. He is the author of numerous volumes including Principles of Grammar and Learning (1987), Syntactic Development (1997), and How Children Learn Language (2005). His book, Syntactic Carpentry (2005), sets out his ideas on the centrality of the processor in language acquisition.

From the Back Cover

This comprehensive exposition of the emergentist paradigm reflects the shifting landscape of linguistic theory, and provides advanced students and researchers with the most up-to-date research in our understanding of language emergence. Emergentism focuses on the ways in which the learning, processing, and structure of language emerge from a competing set of cognitive, communicative, and biological constraints, operating across widely divergent time scales. This handbook is the most in-depth and inclusive attempt yet made to bring together studies from the most prominent advocates of emergentism.

Phenomena ranging from syntax and typology to language learning, and processing, to sociolinguistics and computational modeling are explored with reference to the competing forces that shape the emergence of language across nano and intergenerational timescales. The contributors each address key theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues, making this volume the most rigorous examination of emergentist linguistic theory ever published.

From the Inside Flap

This comprehensive exposition of the emergentist paradigm reflects the shifting landscape of linguistic theory, and provides advanced students and researchers with the most up-to-date research in our understanding of language emergence. Emergentism focuses on the ways in which the learning, processing, and structure of language emerge from a competing set of cognitive, communicative, and biological constraints, operating across widely divergent time scales. This handbook is the most in-depth and inclusive attempt yet made to bring together studies from the most prominent advocates of emergentism.

Phenomena ranging from syntax and typology to language learning, and processing,  to sociolinguistics and computational modeling are  explored with reference to the competing forces that shape the emergence of language across nano and intergenerational timescales. The contributors each address key theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues, making this volume the most rigorous examination of emergentist linguistic theory ever published.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1118301757
• ISBN 13: 9781118301753
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 656
• Editor: MacWhinney Brian, O'Grady William