Books like Psycholinguistics by Sol Saporta

Steven Pinker explains how language emerges from innate biological mechanisms, explores recent research on language acquisition and brain function, and addresses common questions about why languages vary and why learning them later is difficult.

Noam Chomsky argues that a biologically built universal grammar underlies all human languages, exploring its rules, representations, and the possible existence of similar grammars in perception, art, science, and the unconscious.

An Introduction to Psycholinguistics examines the psychology of language as it relates to learning, mind and brain as well as to aspects of society and culture. How do we learn to speak and to understand speech? Is language unique to humans? Does language influence culture? Using non-technical language, and providing concrete examples, the authors explore: How children learn to speak and read their native language; Deaf language education; Case studies of wild children and animals and what we can learn from these; Second language acquisition, second language teaching methods, and the problems associated with bilingualism; Language and the brain; The relationship between thought and language. In this new edition the authors propose a radical new theory of grammar -- natural grammar -- which unlike other theories can account for both speech comprehension and speech production. Also taking into account the extensive growth in theory, research and practice, this new edition is an accessible and focused introduction to the key issues and the latest research in the field of psycholinguistics. - Back cover.

David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the relationship between gesture and language, here argues that gestures are active participants in both speaking and thinking. He posits that gestures are key ingredients in an "imagery-language dialectic" that fuels speech and thought. The smallest unit of this dialectic is the growth point, a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage.In Gesture and Thought, the central growth point comes from a Tweety Bird cartoon. Over the course of twenty-five years, the McNeill Lab showed this cartoon to numerous subjects who spoke a variety of languages, and a fascinating pattern emerged. The shape and timing of gestures depends not only on what speakers see but on what they take to be distinctive; this, in turn, depends on the context. Those who remembered the same context saw the same distinctions and used similar gestures; those who forgot the context understood something different and changed gestures or used none at all. Thus, the gesture becomes part of the growth point—the building block of language and thought.Gesture and Thought is an ambitious project in the ongoing study of how we communicate and how language is connected to thought.