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 / softback, 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]