Neural Network Model of Lexical Organisation

Michael Fortescue is Professor of General Linguistics in the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

"Michael Fortescue sets forth "to provide a bridge between neurology and theoretical linguistics" and a patient reader can only conclude that he accomplishes this rather daunting, synthetic task exceptionally well. Neuroscientifically, the author is very well-informed, building on the work of established authorities such as Deacon and Pulvermüller, but mostly on the relatively less-known model of Yves Burnod. As an established cognitive-functional linguist, however, he far surpasses such work in linguistic coverage, rigor and theoretical sophistication. In the first part of the book, Fortescue develops a neurologically plausible model of the mental lexicon, distinguishing systematically between sensori(motor) affordances, and what he calls "mirco-functional affordances" (of key importance for grammar) and "macro-functional affordances" (related to pragmatics and context), and at the same time shows how they are integrated in speech production and comprehension. An important contribution is a three-dimensional graphic representational format, which may at first appear complicated, but is clearly worth the effort, since it possesses considerably more structure than alternative (connectionist) models, and therefore possibly for the first time shows how language could be neurally realized. In part 2, the model is applied to phenomena that have concerned linguists for quite some time: semantic fields, compositionality, grammatical constructions, polysemy (including metaphor and metonymy) and cross-linguistic variation (typology), both casting new light on them theoretically, and showing how they could be treated neuroscientifically. The third and final part is reserved for the most difficult issues: the relations between lexicon, grammar and context in language use and acquisition, and concludes by specifying predictions that can be experimentally tested. All this makes this book truly deserve the rather overused epithet "ground-breaking". - Associate Professor Jordan Zlatev, Centre for Cognitive Semiotics, Lund University, Sweden

• Part 1: The Basics1. Introduction1.1 The mental lexicon1.2 The nature of the model2. Some sample word templates2.1 A noun template2.2 Nouns versus verbs2.3 Other parts of speech2.4 A "derived" word     3. The production and comprehension of simple sentences4. Expansion to a complex sentence4.1 Some new word types4.2 Production of a complex sentence - and an inference5. Further dimensions of the model5.1 Relating event structures5.2 Nominalizations and abstract nouns5.3 Some loose endsSummary of Part 1Part 2: Applications6. Semantic fields and lexical categories7. Compositionality7.1 Nominal composition7.2 Verbal decomposition7.3 More on causal derivation7.4 Complex word meaning: a test case for compositionality8. Constructions9. Polysemy9.1 Polysemy and context9.2 An excursion into metaphor and metonymy10. Some further questions of qualia11. Extensions to languages of different morphological typeSummary of Part 2Part 3: Cognitive Justification of the Model12. The interfacing of grammar and lexicon12.1 Grammar templates12.2 The realization of grammatical and semantic features by call trees12.3 How call trees and combination matrixes might function13. The neural representation of context14. Acquisition15. Prospective conclusions15.1 The justification for separating affordance levels  15.2 Potential (dis)confirmation of the modelAppendix 1: The relationship to Burnod's neurological modelAppendix 2: Paradigmatic features of English wordsAppendix 3: Sample derivationsList of templatesGraphic conventions as first introducedReferencesIndex