Storage and Computation in the Language Faculty

Nooteboom, S.G.

ISBN 10: 140200527X / ISBN 13: 9781402005275

Published by Springer 2002-05, 2002

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 6666-IUK-9781402005275

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Storage and Computation in the Language Faculty
• Publisher: Springer 2002-05
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 140200527X
• ISBN 13: 9781402005275
• Binding: PF
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Every now and again I receive a lengthy manuscript from a kind of theoretician known to psychiatrists as the "triangle people" - kooks who have independently discovered that everything in the universe comes in threes (solid , liquid, gas; protons, neutrons, electrons; the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost ; Moe, Larry, Curly; and so on) . At the risk of sounding like a triangle person, let me explain why I think that the topic of this volume - - storage and computation in the language fac­ ulty - though having just two sides rather than three, is the key to understanding every interesting issue in the study of language. I will begin with the fundamental scientific problem in linguistics: explaining the vast expressive power of language. What is the trick behind our ability to filleach others' heads with so many different ideas? I submit there is not one trick but two, and they have been emphasized by different thinkers throughout the history of linguistics.

Synopsis

Traditionally, computation - the rule-driven manipulation of symbols - as opposed to (lexical) storage, has been the main focus of research in the language faculty. There is, however, increasing evidence of a prominent role of storage. Constructions that could be computed not necessarily always are. In this volume, the relative roles of computation and storage are discussed, both theoretically and on the basis of linguistic, psycholinguistic, and brain-imaging evidence, with respect to a wide range of language phenomena, such as morphological processing, syntactic processing, limitations of parsing mechanisms, neural substrates of short-term storage versus computation, and the processing of discourse. Each chapter has been written by one or more outstanding experts in the field. The contributions are thorough, but at the same time free from unnecessary technical detail, so that the volume is accessible to experienced readers as well as students in linguistics, psychology, and other cognitive sciences.