Niels O. Schiller - Böcker

Neurolinguistics is a young and highly interdisciplinary field, with influences from psycholinguistics, psychology, aphasiology, and (cognitive) neuroscience, as well as other fields. Neurolinguistics, like psycholinguistics, covers aspects of language processing; but unlike psycholinguistics, it draws on data from patients with damage to language processing capacities, or the use of modern neuroimaging technologies such as fMRI, TMS, or both. The burgeoning interest in neurolinguistics reflects that an understanding of the neural bases of this data can inform more biologically plausible models of the human capacity for language.The Oxford Handbook of Neurolinguistics provides concise overviews of this rapidly-growing field, and engages a broad audience with an interest in the neurobiology of language. The chapters do not attempt to provide exhaustive coverage, but rather present discussions of prominent questions posed by given topics. The volume opens with essential methodological chapters: Section I, Methods, covers the key techniques and technologies used to study the neurobiology of language today, with chapters structured along the basic divisions of the field. Section II addresses the neurobiology of language acquisition during healthy development and in response to challenges presented by congenital and acquired conditions. Section III covers the many facets of our articulate brain, or speech-language pathology, and the capacity for language production-written, spoken, and signed. Questions regarding how the brain comprehends meaning, including emotions at word and discourse levels, are addressed in Section IV. Finally, Section V reaches into broader territory, characterizing and contextualizing the neurobiology of language with respect to more fundamental neuroanatomical mechanisms and general cognitive domains.

This handbook offers a detailed account of grammatical gender and classifiers, two closely related linguistic phenomena that are used to subcategorize the nominal system in many languages of the world. The contributors draw on data from a variety of typologically diverse languages and approach the topic from a range of different perspectives. In the first part, chapters summarize current theoretical research in the field, as well as suggesting new ways to analyse the relevant lexico-syntactic features. Part II turns instead to the substantial body of research on the acquisition of gender and classifier systems in different language families, while chapters in Part III explore the representation and processing of these systems, including coverage of code-switching and language processing in aphasia. Both these parts feature examples and data not only from Indo-European languages but also from under-represented and endangered languages. The final part of the volume presents a broad typological overview of gender and classifier systems across the world, with examples from Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Classifiers will be a valuable resource for researchers and scholars in morphosyntax, typology, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience of language.

This special issue on language production is based on a selection of contributions to the Second International Workshop on Language Production held in August 2005 in Maastricht. The volume is an overview of new directions within language production research and includes papers on word selection and its modelling, the production of pauses in sentence production, the interaction between spontaneous gestures and speech, and changes in language production behaviour in ageing.

This special issue on language production is based on a selection of contributions to the Second International Workshop on Language Production held in August 2005 in Maastricht. The volume is an overview of new directions within language production research and includes papers on word selection and its modelling, the production of pauses in sentence production, the interaction between spontaneous gestures and speech, and changes in language production behaviour in ageing.