Language in the Brain

A neurocognitive analysis of the form, use and meaning of language, bridging the gap between linguistic and neuroscientific studies.

Helmut Schnelle (Author)

9780521739719, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 20 May 2010

248 pages, 33 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.5 x 1.3 cm, 0.4 kg

"The book is informative [and] ambitious."
Andrew Kertesz, The Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences

Linguistics, neurocognition, and phenomenological psychology are fundamentally different fields of research. Helmut Schnelle provides an interdisciplinary understanding of a new integrated field in which linguists can be competent in neurocognition and neuroscientists in structure linguistics. Consequently the first part of the book is a systematic introduction to the function of the form and meaning-organising brain component - with the essential core elements being perceptions, actions, attention, emotion and feeling. Their descriptions provide foundations for experiences based on semantics and pragmatics. The second part is addressed to non-linguists and presents the structural foundations of currently established linguistic frameworks. This book should be serious reading for anyone interested in a comprehensive understanding of language, in which evolution, functional organisation and hierarchies are explained by reference to brain architecture and dynamics.

Part I. Introducing Cognitive Neuroscience to Linguists: 1. The brain in functional perspective
2. Organization in complex organisms
3. Neural perspectives of semantics: examples of seeing, acting, memorizing, meaningful understanding, feeling, and thought
4. Combination and integration of intelligent thought and feeling
Part II. Introducing Linguistics to Scientists: 5. Introducing formal grammar
6. Grammar as life
7. Integrating language organization in mind and brain - the world of thinking and knowing, liking or hating other people's mind/brain/bodies
8. Dynamic language organization in stages of complexity.

Subject Areas: Neurosciences [PSAN], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH], Philosophy [HP], Psycholinguistics [CFD]