Charles J Fillmore – författare

Individual Differences in Language Ability and Language Behavior is a collection of papers that discusses differences at the center of the study of language, specifically, on the various dimensions of linguistic ability and behavior along which individuals can differ from each other. Papers also review the development of techniques that measure these dimensions in relation to biological, psychological, and cultural parameters. Some papers review individual differences in language study in terms of different perspectives: that of a psychometrician''s, of an individualistic''s vantage point, and of a psycholinguistic''s. Other papers discuss how each individual accesses, uses, and judges his language through fluency, biases, spatial principles, or a linguistic-phonetic mode. Several papers examine individual differences in language acquisition, such as "profile analysis," strategies in acquisition of sounds, second language learning, and duplication of adult language system. A group of papers addresses the biological aspects of language variation. These biological aspects include selective disorders of syntax (agrammatism), selective disorders of lexical retrieval (anomia), and cerebral lateralization effects in language processing. Certain papers explain individual differences in languages using sociolinguistic analysis. The collection is well suited for linguists, ethnologists, psychologists, and researchers whose works involve linguistics, learning, communications, and syntax.

This volume continues the collection of work by Charles J. Fillmore, which he started in 2003. Taken together, the work gathered in these volumes reflects Fillmore’s desire to make sense of the workings of language in a way that keeps in mind questions of language form, language use, and the conventions linking form, meaning, and practice.  Divided into four parts, the papers collected in Volume II explore language in use; semantics and pragmatics; text and discourse; and language in society.