The Psycholinguistics of Words

The Psycholinguistics of Words, Sentences and Discourse introduces the way words, sentences and discourse live in the mind. Actual language use is about putting together words into syntactic frames that make sense in a specific context. This book provides an overview of the many mental processes involved in that, explaining how the mind conjures up specific words and syntactic structures in a particular situation of discourse.

The book:

• Offers an overview of historic research milestones as well as more recent developments and research in psycholinguistics
• Introduces how words, sentences and discourse are processed in the mind
• Answers questions such as what is needed to develop a linguistic capacity, and how current technology can help us enter the linguistic mind with a chapter on AI and language
• Includes definitions of key linguistic terms, chapter outlines, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading and summaries of key points

This entertaining and informed introduction to the psychological reality of the human language faculty will be of interest to students and researchers in psycholinguistics, experimental psychology and artificial intelligence.