32.4000, Books: Keeping Those Words in Mind: Louwerse

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-4000. Tue Dec 21 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.4000, Books: Keeping Those Words in Mind: Louwerse

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Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2021 10:48:36
From: Jake Bonar [jbonar at rowman.com]
Subject: Keeping Those Words in Mind: Louwerse

 


Title: Keeping Those Words in Mind 
Subtitle: How Language Creates Meaning 
Publication Year: 2021 
Publisher: Prometheus Books
	   http://prometheusbooks.com/
	

Book URL: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781633886506/Keeping-Those-Words-in-Mind-How-Language-Creates-Meaning 


Author: Max Louwerse

Hardback: ISBN:  9781633886506 Pages: 360 Price: U.S. $ 27.95 Comment: The book is targeted at a general audience, but can also be used as an undergraduate-level textbook for a cognitive science, psycholinguistic, or computational linguistic course.


Abstract:

How can humans keep thousands of words in mind and have no difficulty
understanding trillions of sentences? The answer to this question might lie in
parents teaching their children language skills, or in in the human brain,
which may be equipped with a language instinct or maybe in impressive memory
skills that link words to their perceptual information. Undoubtedly, there is
some truth to some of these explanations. But one answer – perhaps the most
important answer – has been largely ignored. "Keeping Those Words in Mind"
tries to remedy this oversight.

Linguist and cognitive psychologist Max Louwerse, PhD. argues that
understanding language is not just possible because of memory, brains,
environment and computation, but because of the patterns in the sequence of
sounds and words themselves. He demonstrates that what seems to be an
arbitrary communication system, with arbitrary characters and sounds that
become words, and arbitrary meanings for those words, actually is a
well-organized system that has evolved over tens of thousands of years to make
communication as efficient as it is. What is needed for humans to acquire
language, is for humans to recognize and discover the patterns in our
communication system.

By examining how our brains process language and find patterns, the
intricacies of the language system itself, and even scientific breakthroughs
in computer science and artificial intelligence, "Keeping Those Words in Mind"
brings a brand new and interdisciplinary explanation for our ability to
extract meaning from language.
 



Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
                     Psycholinguistics
                     Semantics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=159213




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