One of Moliere's gauche characters in Le Bourgeoise Gentilhomme re sponds with surprise when he learns that he has been speaking prose all his life. The apparent discovery, reflected in his comment, provides us with both the virtues and the difficulties in presenting "yet another book," especially one with a somewhat ambitious title as this one. The virtues may be cataloged under cross-fertilization among a number of disciplines which provides impetus to new ideas, work, and even dis coveries. The difficulties pertain to the difference in focus of each disci pline, the difference in the object each discipline chooses to study, and the difference in specialized language that accrues between fields of inquiry. Not too many years ago, natural science and especially psychology were within the confines of philosophy and its subsectors: the pre Socratic philosophers were essentially cosmologists, and only later, with Socrates and Plato's work, did an interest in epistemology assume a central position within philosophy. Although this event put man at the center of philosophical inquiry, the emergence of techniques to study psychological processes per se was indeed late and, at that, long after natural science had edged away from philosophy. Recently, it is some times difficult to distinguish linguistics from philosophy, because there is a strong wave of philosophical thinking that is dependent on linguistic analysis, and the specialized linguistics of that area depends heavily on philosophical musings.

Psycholinguistics: Introduction and Applications, Second Edition is the first textbook in psycholinguistics created for working language professionals and students in speech-language pathology and language education, as well as for students in psychology and linguistics. It provides a clear, lively introduction to research and ideas about how human brains process language in speaking, understanding, and reading. Within a unifying framework of the constant interplay of bottom-up (sensory) and top-down (knowledge-based) processing across all language uses and modalities, it is an integrated, self-contained, fully updated account of psycholinguistics and its clinical and pedagogical applications. In this second edition, author Lise Menn is joined by leading brain researcher and aphasiologist, Nina Dronkers. The significantly revised brain chapter contains current findings on brain structure and function, including the roles of newly delineated fiber tracts and language areas outside Broca's and Wernicke's areas. Fully-explained examples are taken from Spanish and other languages as well as English. Five core chapters (language description; brain structure and function; pragmatic and semantic stages of speech production; syntactic, morphological, phonological, and phonetic stages of speech production; and experimental psycholinguistics) form the foundation for chapters, presenting classic and recent research on aphasia, first language development, reading, and second language learning. A final chapter demonstrates how linguistics and psycholinguistics can and should inform classroom and clinical practice in test design and error analysis, while also explaining the care that must be taken in translating theoretically based ideas into such real-world applications. Concepts from linguistics, neurology, and experimental psychology are kept vivid by illustrations of their uses in the real world, the clinic, and language teaching. Technical terms are clearly explained in context and also in a large reference glossary. Disclaimer: Please note that ancillary content (such as documents, audio, and video, etc.) may not be included as published in the original print version of this book.

This handbook includes an overview of those areas of cognition and language processing that are relevant to the field of communication disorders, and provides examples of theoretical approaches to problems and issues in communication disorders. The first section includes a collection of chapters that outline some of the basic considerations and areas of cognition and language that underlie communication processing; a second section explains and exemplifies some of the influential theories of psycholinguistic/cognitive processing; and the third section illustrates theoretical applications to clinical populations. There is coverage of theories that have been either seminal or controversial in the research of communication disorders. Given the increasing multi-cultural workload of many practitioners working with clinical populations, chapters relating to bilingual populations are also included. The volume book provides a single interdisciplinary source where researchers and students can access information on psycholinguistic and cognitive processing theories relevant to clinical populations. A range of theories, models, and perspectives are provided. The range of topics and issues illustrate the relevance of a dynamic interaction between theoretical and applied work, and retains the complexity of psycholinguistic and cognitive theory for readers (both researchers and graduate students) whose primary interest is the field of communication disorders.

Linguistics for Clinicians provides an introduction to linguistic analysis in the clinical context. The book draws on a range of linguistic theories and descriptions, equipping readers with a conceptual toolkit that will enable them to: analyse data systematically, taking into account different types of linguistic properties; pick out significant patterns that can give them clinically relevant cues; build explicit arguments to back up their observations and hypotheses; select relevant linguistic items for assessment and therapy tasks. The syntactic sections cover standard concepts and their application to a range of data is worked through step by step. This solid grounding in syntax provides a springboard for detailed analyses of sentence semantics and sentence phonology which are particularly relevant in clinical assessment and therapy, but are not usually available outside specialist linguistic texts. These sections cover: event structure and its representation by verbs and their complements; the timing and modality of events and their representation by the auxiliary system; rhythmic patterns of sentences and how the type and position of individual words influences them. Clinical relevance is a central theme throughout the book. All linguistic concepts are introduced with examples of their clinical use. Analytical tips are included to anticipate and deal with common problems of clinical application. Extensive exercises further illustrate the use of linguistic concepts in data analysis and task construction. Linguistics for Clinicians is primarily a linguistics textbook for students and teachers on clinical courses. It is also a useful resource for practising clinicians, psycholinguitics students and researchers in language impairments.

Linguistics and Aphasia is a major study of recent developments in applying psycholinguistics and pragmatics to the study of acquired language disorders (aphasia) and their remediation. Psycholinguistic analyses of aphasia interpret disorders in terms of damaged modules and processes within what was once a normal language system. These analyses have progressed to the point that they now routinely provide a model-based rationalefor planning patient therapy. Through a series of case studies, the authors show how the psycholinguistic analysis of aphasia can be assessed for its effectiveness in clinical practice. Pragmatic approaches to the study of aphasia are of more recent origin. Ruth Lesser and Lesley Milroy evaluate their considerable significance to the study of aphasia and their relevance to practical issues of diagnosis and treatment. Controversial analysis, in particular, offers a fruitful and productive framework within which to assess the functional adequacy of the language used by aphasic speakers in everyday contexts.

This Handbook is the first authoritative reference work solely dedicated to the theory, method, and applications of Construction Grammar, and will be a resource that students and scholars alike can turn to for a representative overview of its many sub-theories and applications.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the theories of cognition and language processing relevant to the field of communication disorders. Thoroughly updated in its second edition, the book explores a range of topics and issues that illustrate the relevance of a dynamic interaction between both theoretical and applied clinical work. Beginning with the origins of language evolution, the authors explore a range of both developmental and acquired communication disorders, reflecting the variety and complexity of psycholinguistics and its role in extending our knowledge of communication disorders. The first section outlines some of the major theoretical approaches from psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience that have been influential in research focusing on clinical populations, while Section II features examples from researchers who have applied this body of knowledge to developmental disorders of communication. Section III features examples focusing on acquired language disorders, and finally, Section IV considers psycholinguistic approaches to gesture, sign language, and alternative and augmentative communication (AAC). The new edition features new chapters offering fresh perspectives, further reading recommendations and a new epilogue from Jackie Guendouzi. This valuable text serves as a single interdisciplinary resource for graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in cognitive neurosciences, psychology, communication sciences and disorders, as well as researchers new to the field of communication disorders or to psycholinguistic theory.

Those working on the description of disordered speech are bound to be also involved with clinical phonology to some extent. This is because interpreting the speech signal is only the first step to an analysis. Describing the organization and function of a speech system is the next step. However, it is here that phonologists differ in their descriptions, as there are many current approaches in modern linguistics to undertaking phonological analyses of both normal and disordered speech. Much of the work in theoretical phonology of the last fifty years or so is of little use in either describing disordered speech or explaining it. This is because the dominant theoretical approach in linguists as a whole attempts elegant descriptions of linguistic data, not a psycholinguistic model of what speakers do when they speak. The latter is what is needed in clinical phonology. In this text, Martin J. Ball addresses these issues in an investigation of what principles should underlie a clinical phonology. This is not, however, simply another manual on how to do phonological analyses of disordered speech data, though examples of the application of various models of phonology to such data are provided. Nor is this a guide on how to do therapy, though a chapter on applications is included. Rather, this is an exploration of what theoretical underpinnings are best suited to describing, classifying, and treating the wide range of developmental and acquired speech disorders encountered in the speech-language pathology clinic.

The issue of self-concept is central to the studies and practices of education and psychology. The research presented in this book are the explorations of how self-concept translates into and has an effect on these far reaching and unavoidable aspects of life.