Talking the Talk

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Talking the Talk provides a comprehensive introduction to the psychology of language, written for the reader with no background in the field or any prior knowledge of psychology. It is essential reading for all undergraduate students and those new to the topic, as well as the interested lay reader.

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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