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� Comprehensive coverage of all the major topics in psycholinguistics

� Considers child as well as adult language

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� Looks at language in context: how it depends on the brain, and how it is used in practice

� Now in two-color with a range of supplementary materials

New Edition of Bestselling Textbook!

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Trevor Harley carriedout his Ph.D. work at theUniversity of Cambridgeon speech errors andwhat they tell us abouthow we plan language.He has been Head of theSchool of Psychology atthe University of Dundeesince 2003. His researchinterests include speechproduction, how werepresent meaning, andthe effects of ageing onlanguage.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, THIRD EDITION is a thorough revision andupdate of the popular second edition. It contains everything the student needs toknow about the psychology of language including how we acquire, produce, andstore language. This third edition contains new chapters on how children learn toread, and how language is used in everyday settings. It also describes recentresearch on the impact of new techniques of brain imaging.

The text is comprehensive and written in a lively and accessible style. It covers allthe main topics in this complex field, focusing on reading, writing, speaking, andlistening in both adult and child language. There is an emphasis on languageprocessing as well as language production and coverage of the social basis oflanguage. The text includes recent connectionist models of language, describingcomplex ideas in a clear and approachable manner. Following a strongdevelopmental theme, the text describes how children acquire language(sometimes more than one), and also how they learn to read. The Psychology ofLanguage also demonstrates how language is related to the brain, and to otheraspects of cognition.

For the first time, a CD-ROM of supplementary materials will be available toaccompany the textbook, which will include:

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• Multiple-choice questions in paper and pen format.

The CD-ROM will be available free of charge to qualifying adopters.

The Psychology of Language assumes no prior knowledge other than a groundingin the basic concepts of cognitive psychology. This third edition of this bestsellingtextbook will be essential reading for any student of cognition, psycholinguistics orthe psychology of language. It will also be useful for those on speech and languagetherapy courses.

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1. THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE 15

FIGURE 1.3

Cerebral cortex

Optic chiasm

HypothalamusPineal gland

Suprachiasmaticnucleus

Cingulate gyrus

Frontal lobe

Thalamus

Pituitary

MidbrainLocus coeruleus

Pons

Medulla

Brain stem

Cerebellum

Occipital lobe

Hippocampus

Parietal lobe

Corpuscallosum

studies cannot provide any information appropri-ate for constructing cognitive models. This proposalled to heated controversy (e.g., Bates, McDonald,MacWhinney, & Appelbaum, 1991; Caramazza,1986, 1991; McCloskey & Caramazza, 1988).Second, it has gone too far in claiming thatinformation about the localization of function isirrelevant to our understanding of behavior (e.g.,Morton, 1984). Third, it has undervalued clinicalinformation about patients. Seidenberg (1988)pointed to another problem, which is that cogni-tive neuropsychology places too much emphasison uncovering the functional architecture of thesystems involved. That is, the organization of thecomponents—specifying levels of processing andhow they are connected to each other—involvedis emphasized at the cost of exploring the pro-cesses actually involved, leading to the construc-tion of box-and-arrow diagrams with little advancein our understanding of what goes on inside theboxes, or how we get from one box to another.More emphasis is now being placed on whathappens inside the components, particularly sinceconnectionist modeling has been applied to cog-nitive neuropsychology.

A cross-sectional view of thebrain.

FIGURE 1.4

Primary auditory cortex Wernicke’s

area

Broca’sarea

Motor cortex

23

1

The location of Wernicke’s area (1) and Broca’s area (3).When someone speaks a word, activation proceeds fromWernicke’s area through the arcuate fasciculus (2) toBroca’s area.

Shallice went on to argue that sometimes thisapproach has been taken too far, and called thisextreme position ultra-cognitive neuropsychology.First, it has gone too far in arguing that group

GLOSSARY 491

491

Glossary

Allophones: phonetic variants of phonemes. Forexample, in English the phoneme /p/ has twovariants, an aspirated (breathy) and unaspirated(non-breathy) form. You can feel the differ-ence if you say the words “pit” and “spit” withyour hand a few inches from your mouth.

Anaphor: a linguistic expression for which thereferent can only be determined by takinganother linguistic expression into account—namely the anaphor’s antecedent (e.g., “Vladwas happy; he loved the vampire”—here he isthe anaphor and Vlad is the antecedent).

Aneurysm: dilation of blood vessel (e.g., in thebrain), where a sac in the blood vessel is formedand presses on surrounding tissue.

Anomia: difficulty in naming objects.Antecedent: the linguistic expression that must

be taken into account in order to determinethe referent of an anaphor (“Vlad was happy;he loved the vampire”—here he is the anaphorand Vlad the antecedent). Often the antecedentis the thing for which a pronoun is beingsubstituted.

Aphasia: a disorder of language, including adefect or loss of expressive (production) orreceptive (comprehension) aspects of written orspoken language as a result of brain damage.

Apraxia: an inability to plan movements, in theabsence of paralysis. Of particular relevance isspeech apraxia, an inability to carry out prop-erly controlled movements of the articulatoryapparatus. Compare with dysarthria.

Acoustics: the study of the physical properties ofsounds.

Acquired disorder: a disorder caused by braindamage is acquired if it affects an ability thatwas previously intact (contrasted with develop-mental disorder).

Activation: can be thought of as the amount ofenergy possessed by something. The morehighly activated something is, the more likelyit is to be output.

AD: Alzheimer’s disease or dementia—often thereis some uncertainty about the diagnosis, so thisis really shorthand for “probable Alzheimer’sdisease” or “dementia of the Alzheimer’s type.”

Adjective: a describing word (e.g., “red”).Adverb: a type of word that modifies a verb (e.g.,

“quickly”).Affix: a bound morpheme that cannot exist on its

own, but that must be attached to a stem (e.g.,re-, -ing). It can come before the main word,when it is a prefix, or after, when it is a suffix.

Agent: the thematic role describing the entity thatinstigates an action.

Agnosia: disorder of object recognition.Agrammatism: literally, “without grammar”; a

type of aphasia distinguished by an impair-ment of syntactic processing (e.g., difficultiesin sentence formation, inflection formation, andparsing). There has been considerable debateabout the extent to which agrammatism formsa syndrome.

Alexia: inability to read.

2. DESCRIBING LANGUAGE 31

FIGURE 2.2

Hard palate

Alveolarridge

Nasal cavity

Velum(soft palate)

Uvula

Tongue

Vocal cordsLips

Teeth

Esophagus

Trachea

Epiglottis

Glottis

Larynx

The structure of the humanvocal tract.

The position of the tongue modifies the range ofharmonics produced by the larynx. Consonants(such as p, b, t, d, k, g) are made by closing orrestricting some part of the vocal tract at thebeginning or end of a vowel. Most consonantscannot be produced without some sort of vowel.This description suggests that one way to exam-ine the relation between sounds is to look at theirplace of articulation—that is, the place where thevocal tract is closed or restricted. The contrastingfeatures needed to describe sounds are known asdistinctive features.

Vowels

Vowels are made with a relatively free flow of air.The nature of the vowel is determined by the wayin which the shape of the tongue modifies theairflow. Table 2.2 shows how vowels can be clas-sified depending on the position (which can beraised, medium, or lower) of the front, central, orrear portions of the tongue. For example, the /i/sound in “meat” is an example of a high frontvowel because the air flows through the mouthwith the front part of the tongue in a raised (high)position.

Two vowel sounds can be combined to form adiphthong. Examples are the sounds in “my,”“cow,” “go,” and “boy.”

Whereas the pronunciation of consonants isrelatively constant across dialects, that of vowelscan differ greatly.

Consonants

Consonants are made by closing or restrictingsome part of the vocal tract as air flows though it.

TABLE 2.2

Vowels as combinations of distinguishingphonological features

Front Central Back

High i uı i

Mid e d og c

Low æ e a

KEY TERMS

Consonants: a sound produced with some constrictionof the airstream, unlike a vowel.Diphthong: a type of vowel that combines two vowelsounds (e.g., in “boy,” “cow,” and “my”).

Sample pages from the new edition

3. THE FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE 55

relative to the sun, and the rate at which the beewaggles during the dance represents distance.

Primates use visual, auditory, tactile, and olfac-tory signals to communicate with each other. Theyuse a wide variety of calls to symbolize a rangeof features of the environment and their emo-tional states. For example, a vervet monkeyproduces one particular “chutter” to warn othersthat a snake is nearby, a different call when aneagle is overhead, and yet another distinct call towarn of approaching leopards. Each type of callelicits different responses from other nearbyvervets (Demers, 1988). However, the signals arelinked to particular stimuli and are only producedin their presence. Primates communicate aboutstimuli for which they do not already possesssignals, suggesting that their communicativesystem has an element of creativity.

It is a widespread belief that whales and dol-phins possess a language. However, the researchdoes not support this belief. There is currentlyno evidence to suggest that dolphins employ se-quences of sub-units that convey particular mes-sages, in the same way as we combine words toform sentences to convey messages. Early researchsuggesting that dolphins were communicating witheach other to carry out cooperative tasks to obtainfish turned out to be explicable in terms of condi-tioning; the dolphins carried on making soundsin the obvious absence of other dolphins (Evans& Bastian, 1969). Hump-backed whale song

Research shows that dolphins do not possess a languagein terms of the intentional structuring of sub-units to deliverintelligible communications. However, this prompts thequestion; at what juncture do we decide thatcommunication can be classed as a language?

consists of ordered sub-parts, but their function isunknown (Demers, 1988).

How would we decide if an animal communi-cation system had crossed the boundary to becounted as a language?

Defining language

“Language” is a difficult word to define. The dic-tionary defines language as “human speech . . . anartificial system of signs and symbols, with rulesfor forming intelligible communications for usee.g., in a computer” (Chambers Twentieth Cen-tury Dictionary, 1977). Many introductions to thestudy of language avoid giving a definition, orconsider it to be so obvious that it does not needto be defined. To some extent the aim of moderntheoretical linguistics is to offer an answer to thisquestion (Lyons, 1977a). Perhaps the differencebetween an animal communication system and alanguage is just a matter of degree?

Design features

Hockett (1960) attempted to sidestep the thornyissue of defining language by listing 16 generalproperties or design features of spoken humanlanguage (see Table 3.1). The emphasis of hisdesign features is very much on the physical

FIGURE 3.1

The waggle dance

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PrefaceHow to use this book

SECTION A: INTRODUCTION

1. The study of languageIntroductionWhat is language?The history and methods of psycholinguisticsLanguage and the brainThemes and controversies in modern psycholinguisticsSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

2. Describing languageIntroductionHow to describe speech soundsLinguistic approaches to syntaxSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

SECTION B: THE BIOLOGICAL ANDDEVELOPMENTAL BASES OF LANGUAGE

3. The foundations of languageIntroductionWhere did language come from?Do animals have language?The biological basis of languageThe cognitive basis of language: the cognition hypothesisThe social basis of languageThe language development of visually and hearing-impairedchildren What is the relation between language and thought?SummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

4. Language developmentIntroductionThe driving forces of language developmentDo children learn any language in the womb? Phonological developmentLexical and semantic developmentEarly syntactic developmentSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

5. Bilingualism and second languageacquisitionIntroductionBilingualismSecond language acquisitionSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

SECTION C: WORD RECOGNITION

6. Recognizing visual wordsIntroductionBasic methods and basic findingsMeaning-based facilitation of visual word recognitionMorphology: processing complex wordsModels of visual word recognitionCoping with lexical ambiguitySummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

7. ReadingIntroductionA preliminary model of readingThe processes of normal readingThe neuropsychology of adult reading disorders: acquireddyslexiaModels of word namingSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

8. Learning to read and spellIntroductionNormal reading developmentDevelopmental dyslexiaSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

9. Understanding speechIntroductionRecognizing speechModels of speech recognitionThe neuropsychology of spoken word recognitionSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

SECTION D: MEANING AND USINGLANGUAGE

10. Understanding the structure ofsentences

IntroductionDealing with structural ambiguityEarly work on parsingProcessing structural ambiguityGaps, traces, and unbounded dependenciesThe neuroscience of parsingSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

11. Word meaningIntroductionClassic approaches to semanticsSemantic networksSemantic featuresFamily resemblance and classificationCombining conceptsProcessing figurative languageThe neuropsychology of semanticsConnectionist approaches to semanticsSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

12. ComprehensionIntroductionMemory for text and inferencesReference, co-reference, and ambiguityModels of text representation and processingIndividual differences in comprehension skillsThe neuropsychology of text and discourse processingSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

SECTION E: PRODUCTION AND OTHERASPECTS OF LANGUAGE

13. Language productionIntroductionSpeech errors and what they tell usSyntactic planningLexicalizationPhonological encodingThe analysis of hesitationsThe neuropsychology of speech productionWriting and agraphiaSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

14. How do we use language?IntroductionMaking inferences in conversationThe structure of conversationCollaboration in dialogSound and visionSummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

15. The structure of the language systemIntroductionWhat are the modules of language?How many lexicons are there?Language and short-term memorySummarySome questions to think aboutFurther reading

16. New directionsIntroductionThemes in psycholinguistics revisitedSome growth areas?Conclusion

Appendix: ConnectionismInteractive activation modelsBack-propagationFurther reading

GlossaryExample of sentence analysis

ReferencesAuthor indexSubject index

CONTENTS

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“Trevor Harley provides a systematic and lucid introduction to the scientific study of

human language use. He traverses a complex range of topics from foundational theory and experimentto practical matters of pedagogy and pathology. It’s a winning combination delivered with wit, balancedaccuracy, and admirable directness of style.” - Merrill Garrett, University of Arizona, USA

“Harley’s book offers an excellent means of enhancing our understandingof language. It provides a clear, comprehensive and thorough review of the current state of play

in psycholinguistics, making it an ideal choice for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.” - Annukka Lindell, University of Wales, Bangor, UK

“Harley has thoroughly revised his very successful textbook on psycholinguistics in light

of new research. The coverage of this work is quite remarkable and it constitutes the ideal resource foradvanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers interested in the field.”- Martin Pickering, University of Edinburgh, UK

“I have been using Harley's text in my third year undergraduate ‘Psychology of Language’ course sincethe first edition came out because I believe its coverage of the important issues is comprehensive and

scholarly while being highly accessible and intellectually stimulating. My studentshave always found it to be a very useful resource in helping them understand language processing.”

- Marcus Taft, University of New South Wales, Australia

The Psychology of Language Third Edition BY TREVOR A. HARLEY

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