Introducing Language and Cognition
A Map of the Mind

This book offers something unique - a perspective of mind and language where diverse topics are carefully integrated within one framework.

Michael Sharwood Smith (Author)

9781107152892, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 January 2017

237 pages
25.4 x 17.9 x 1.8 cm, 0.6 kg

'This wide-ranging book integrates research and theory from different fields and provides a lively, current, and informed description of language from Sharwood Smith's unique perspective on modularity. The book offers much material for advanced students and researchers to discuss and debate crucial issues around language in the mind. It is a welcome addition to research and teaching for everyone working in the language sciences.' Ellen Bialystok, York University

In this accessible introduction, Mike Sharwood Smith provides a working model or 'map' of the mind, with language as its centrepiece. Drawing on cutting-edge research across linguistics, psychology and neuroscience, it allows students to quickly grasp how each separate aspect of the mind's operations can be related. This 'big picture' view includes the way the mind makes, stores and loses memories of all kinds as well how its various 'expert systems' combine and collaborate to solve, typically beyond our conscious awareness, the myriad of tasks we are faced with every minute and millisecond of our existence. The book also focuses on language, that is, the mind of monolingual, bilingual and multilingual speakers. It will be of interest to all students wishing to learn more about the complex relationship between language - one of the most important ways in which we define ourselves as human - and the mind.

Introduction
Part I. Mechanisms of the Mind: 1. The basic design
2. Perception
3. Motion
4. Meaning
5. Affect
6. Memory, processing and activation
7. Consciousness and attention
8. Developing knowledge and ability
Part II. Language(s) in the Mind: 9. Defining language
10. The core system
11. Language beyond the core
12. Two ways of knowing a language
13. Language and affect
14. Language development in the monolingual
15. Becoming multilingual.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Psycholinguistics [CFD], Linguistics [CF]