The Language Organ: Linguistics as Cognitive Physiology
Stephen R. Anderson and David W. Lightfoot
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.
Features:
• An explanation of what linguists mean when they refer to language as a mental ‘organ’
• Discussion of the biological basis for a person’s use of language
• Novel analyses of linguistic phenomena in a number of areas, presented so as to be accessible to readers who are not linguistic scholars
Paperback ISBN:9780521007832
Publication date:September 2002
284pages
2 b/w illus.
Dimensions: 228 x 152 mm
Weight: 0.462kg