Language, Mind and Brain: Some Psychological and Neurological Constraints on Theories of Grammar

by Ewa Dąbrowska

Language, Mind and Brain is a delightfully readable, yet erudite exploration of how the human mind processes and orders sounds and words into meaning. It explores how properties of the human mind/brain constrain linguistic structure and how linguistics can benefit by combining traditional linguistic methodologies with insights from research on language acquisition, processing, and impairment. The first part of the book offers a useful introduction to the relevant issues for readers with little prior knowledge of these disciplines; part two addresses such key issues as the status of rules, the relationship between grammar and the lexicon, and the relationship between innate structure and acquired knowledge. Fascinating for anyone interested in the intricacies of how language is acquired and how the brain sorts sounds into communication.

Genres: Linguistics, Brain

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Lusha Petrunina · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty good, went over a lot. I like that the first half was very broad and the second was very specific.

(notes for myself:
- prefabs vs syntactic composition
- learn more about theory of mind
- high frequency words/chunks become more entrenched in brain neurologically (?)
- too many neural connections to be encoded genetically
- read Deacon about trans-species neural transplants
- read Pinker semantic bootstrapping hypothesis
- broad: where do concepts come from, how are they formed?
- regular vs irregular --> people with Alzheimer's have problems with irregular forms (problem with memory) while people with SLI have problems with regular forms (problem with syntactic composition)
- syntactic rules for specific categories of words, not all (like French adjs, some before some after)
- learn about cognitive grammar)