Talking the Talk

Preface to the third edition 16 1 Language 20 What is this book about? 21 What is the plan of this book? 21 What is language? 25 Are there other types of language other than human? 28 How do human languages differ from each other? 29 How many languages are there? 32 Where did language come from? 35 How has language changed? 39 How has English changed? 41 How do we describe language? 44 How do we do psycholinguistics? 45 Is psycholinguistics a science? 47 What counts as an explanation in psycholinguistics? 49 What is a statistical model? 53 What are the issues in modern psycholinguistics? 55 2 Animals 60 How do animals communicate? 61 What do monkeys communicate about? 63 What can we learn from the birds? 64 How powerful are animal communication systems? 65 Do dolphins and whales use language? 67 Can we teach language to animals? 68 Can parrots talk? 70 What about chimps? 71 What did Washoe know? 74 Why is Kanzi the chimp so important? 77 Why are animals poor at human language? 80 Why is the question of animal language important? 82 3 Children 84 When do children learn language? 84 Can a human foetus learn language? 86 Why do babies babble? 88 How do young children segment speech? 90 What are the first words? 92 How do children learn words? 95 What mistakes do children make? 97 How do adults talk to children? 99 What are the early sentences? 101 What drives syntactic development? 103 When does language acquisition stop? 106 Are we driven to produce language? 107 What’s the difference between a pidgin and a creole? 108 How do children learn language? 110 Do we need to have innate knowledge of language? 114 What are the problems with nativist accounts of language development? 116 Are there language-specific impairments? 119 Are there genes for language? 121 Is there a critical period for language acquisition? 122 What can we learn from isolated children? 125 Is language development dependent on cognitive development? 130 Is language development dependent on social development? 134 4 Two 138 What is bilingualism? 138 How does a child become bilingual? 140 Do you have to be young to learn a second language well? 141 How many lexicons does a bilingual person have? 143 What are cognates? 144 Do two languages interfere with one another? 145 What does neuroscience tell us about bilingualism? 147 Is learning two (or more) languages good for you? 148 What’s the best way to learn a second language? 150 5 Thought 153 What is thought? 153 What is inner speech? 155 Is language a special, separate module? 157 What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? 158 What can we learn from numerical cognition? 163 What can we learn from how people name colours? 166 Does language influence memory and reasoning? 170 Are we forced to think in categories? 174 Are there practical consequences of the way we use language? 175 6 Meaning 179 What’s the meaning of meaning? 179 What does philosophy tell us about meaning? 180 What’s a dog? 182 Are meanings captured by networks? 184 What’s a semantic feature? 187 How do we search our semantic memory? 191 What does deep dyslexia tell us about word meaning? 193 What do connectionist models tell us about meaning and deep dyslexia? 195 How can we explain what goes wrong in dementia? 201 How is semantic memory organised? 203 How does the brain store semantic categories? 204 What’s grounding? 206 What are statistical models of meaning? 208 7 Words 211 How do study word processing? 212 How do we recognise spoken words? 214 What is the Cohort model of word recognition? 218 What is the TRACE model of word recognition? 219 How should we evaluate models of spoken word recognition? 221 How do we read? 223 How did reading evolve? 224 What’s the dual-route model of reading? 226 What does brain damage tell us about reading? 228 What are the problems with the dual-route model? 230 What’s the triangle model of reading? 233 Do we have to sound a word to understand it? 236 Does speed reading work? 238 How do we understand ambiguous words? 240 What is the alphabetic principle? 244 What is phonological awareness? 246 What is the best way of learning to read? 248 What is developmental dyslexia? 250 What causes developmental dyslexia? 252 How should we treat developmental dyslexia? 256 8 Understanding 259 What is parsing? 260 What is syntactic ambiguity? 261 What are garden path sentences? 263 How do we deal with temporary ambiguity? 265 How do we decide where to attach phrases? 266 What does the study of electrical activity in the brain (ERPs) tell us about parsing? 269 How do multiple constraints operate? 271 How then do we parse, really? 274 Why is making a model of the world important? 276 What do we remember of what we understand? 277 How do we make use of context? 279 How do we go beyond the words? 281 What can we do with language? 285 How do we link new information with old? 288 How do we construct our mental model? 292 How does brain damage affect recognising spoken words? 293 Where does humour in language come from? 294 How do chatbots work? 296 9 Speaking 300 Can we learn from our mistakes? 301 What are Freudian slips? 305 What is the Fromkin-Garrett model of speech production? 306 How do we retrieve words when speaking? 310 Why are words sometimes on the “tip of our tongue”? 317 How do we plan syntax? 320 What is syntactic priming? 322 How do we get different parts of a sentence to agree with each other? 325 How do we control conversations? 329 How does brain damage affect language? 331 10 End 338 Are there sex differences in language? 338 How does neurodiversity affect language? 341 How does ageing affect language? 342 Is there a “Grand Model” of language processing in the brain? 344 What were those issues again? 347 What use is psycholinguistics? 350 What’s the future? 351 11 Next 352 Chapter 1: language 352 Chapter 2: animals 354 Chapter 3: children 355 Chapter 4: two 358 Chapter 5: thought 359 Chapter 6: meaning 362 Chapter 7: words 365 Chapter 8: understanding 368 Chapter 9: speaking 370 Chapter 10: end 372 Questions 374 1 Language 374 2 Animals 374 3 Children 375 4 Two 375 5 Thought 375 6 Meaning 375 7 Words 376 8 Understanding 376 9 Speaking 376 10 End 377