Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language

The Stirling Psychology of Language Conference was held in the University of Stirling, 21-26 June 1976. 250 people attended the conference and 70 papers were presented. The two volumes of Pro­ ceedings present a selection of papers from the conference reflect­ ing as far as possible the range of topics that were discussed. Volume 1 is concerned exclusively with language acquisition. In recent years the 'centre of gravity' of acquisition research has shifted from syntactic and phonological description to the amor­ phous domains of semantics and pragmatics. This shift is reflected in the two large sections (II and III) devoted to these aspects of language development. In addition the volume contains three smaller sections dealing with general problems of acquisition theory, syntax and the development of comprehension, and applied developmental psycholinguistics. Volume 2 contains a substantial section of papers which stress the formal aspects of psycholinguistics: these include papers in which artificial intelligence figures prominently, papers which apply re­ cent developments in syntax and semantics to psycholinguistic prob­ lems, and papers that are broadly critical of the use psychologists have made of linguistic theories. Volume 2 also contains a section dealing with the experimental study of sentence comprehension and production, and there is a final section concerned with phonology and its development.

Contenu

of Volume 4B.- Section I: Formal Approaches.- Learning the Syntax of Questions.- Semantics and Language Acquisition: Some Theoretical Considerations.- Empirical Question About Developmental Psycholinguistics Raised By a Theory of Language Acquisition.- The Interplay of Semantic and Surface Structure Acquisition.- Predictive Understanding.- Sentence Construction By a Psychologically Plausible Formulator.- A Computational Model of Discourse Production.- Structure and Use of Verbs of Motion.- Verbs of Judging and Acts of Judging.- A Programmatic Theory of Linguistic Performance.- On the Re-integration of Linguistics and Psychology.- Language Acquisition as the Addition of Verbal Routines.- Syntax and Semantics for the Psycholinguist.- Syntax and Semantics of Relative Clauses.- Section II: Sentence Comprehension and Production.- Foreground and Background Information in Reasoning.- Anaphora: A Problem in Text Comprehension.- Sentence Comprehension Processes in the Pre-Schooler.- Reference as a Speech Art: An Argument for Studying the Listener.- Gesture and Silence as Indicators of Planning in Speech.- Section III: Phonology.- Sound Patterns and Spelling Patterns in English.- Children's Knowledge of Selected Aspects of Sound Pattern of English.- "Environmental Invariants" and the Prosodic Aspects of Reversed Speech.- Implications of Studying Reduced Consonant Clusters in Normal and Abnormal Child Speech.- Contributors.- Author Index.