In her Beijing lectures, Melissa Bowerman presents a lucid introduction and account of her research on a range of topics: how children acquire the semantics of spatial terms, how they construct categories and acquire the semantics of nouns, and how they master the semantics of verbs in early language acquisition. Bowerman also covers the learning of argument structure and expressions of end-state, with special attention to the adult speech that guides children, and hence also the role of typology in acquisition; how cross-linguistic variation affects, for example, how speakers represent ‘cutting’ and ‘breaking’ in different languages, and the relation of the Whorfian Hypothesis to cross-linguistic variations in the semantics of languages. Bowerman’s over-riding concern throughout is with how children come to master the first language being spoken to them by their parents and caregivers.

This book brings together experts from the fields of linguistics, psychology and neuroscience to explore how a multidisciplinary approach can impact on research into the neurocognition of language. International contributors present cutting-edge research from cognitive and developmental psychology, neuropsychology, psycholinguistics and computer science, and discuss how this contributes to neuropsycholinguistics, a term coined by Jean-Luc Nespoulous, to whom this book is dedicated. Chapters illustrate how researchers with different methods and theoretical backgrounds can contribute to a unified vision of the study of language cognition. Reinterpreting neuropsycholinguistics through the lens of each research field, the book demonstrates important attempts to adopt a comprehensive view of speech and language pathology. Divided into three sections the book covers: linguistic mechanisms and the architecture of language the relationship between language and other cognitive processes the assessment of speech and language disabilities and compensatory mechanisms. Neuropsycholinguistic Perspectives on Language Cognition presents a unique contribution to cognitive science and language science, from linguistics to neuroscience. It will interest academics and scholars in the field, as well as medical researchers, psychologists, and speech and language therapists.

The contributions to this volume focus on what language and language use reveals about cognitive structure and underlying cognitive categories. Wide-ranging and thought-provoking essays from linguists and psychologists within this volume investigate the insights conceptual categorization can give into the organization and structure of the mind and specific mental states. Topics and linguistic phenomena discussed include narratives and story telling, language development, figurative language, linguistic categorization, linguistic relativity, and the linguistic coding of mental states such as perceptions and beliefs. With contributions at the forefront of current debate, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in language and the cognitive structures that support it.

Gender inequality remains an issue of high relevance, and controversy, in society. Previous research shows that language contributes to gender inequality in various ways: Gender-related information is transmitted through formal and semantic features of language, such as the grammatical category of gender, through gender-related connotations of role names (e.g., manager, secretary), and through customs of denoting social groups with derogatory vs. neutral names. Both as a formal system and as a means of communication, language passively reflects culture-specific social conditions. In active use it can also be used to express and, potentially, perpetuate those conditions. The questions addressed in the contributions to this Frontiers Special Topic include: • how languages shape the cognitive representations of gender • how features of languages correspond with gender equality in different societies • how language contributes to social behaviour towards the sexes • how gender equality can be promoted through strategies for gender-fair language use These questions are explored both developmentally (across the life span from childhood to old age) and in adults. The contributions present work conducted across a wide range of languages, including some studies that make cross-linguistic comparisons. Among the contributors are both cognitive and social psychologists and linguists, all with an excellent research standing. The studies employ a wide range of empirical methods: from surveys to electro-physiology. The papers in the Special Topic present a wide range of complimentary studies, which will make a substantial contribution to understanding in this important area.

Linguists and philosophers examine the representation of temporal reference; the interaction of the temporal information from tense, aspect, modality, and context; and the representation of the temporal relations between facts, events, states, propositions, and utterances. They link this to current research in psychology and anthropology.

What role do texts play in religious practice? What is the relationship between these texts and cognition? Are some texts more successful because they are better adapted to our cognitive structures? Why is biblical interpretation necessary, and what is the cognitive process behind it? This book considers such questions, and fills the gap in research on religious texts and narratives in the cognitive science of religion. The study of ancient religions and biblical studies are dominated by textual evidence. However, the cognitive science of religion is lacking significant research on the language and textual interpretation of this literature. This book presents a systematic attempt to redefine the interpretation of religious texts in a cognitive framework, providing concrete textual analysis on a broad selection of biblical passages. It explores the ways that cognitive approaches to language and textual interpretation expand the disciplines of the cognitive science of religion and biblical studies. This book brings together methodology from the cognitive sciences, linguistics, philology, biblical studies, and religious studies, to offer a new perspective for biblical studies and cognitive sciences. It presents a renewed vision of textual interpretation - one that aligns hermeneutical reflection with our cognitive capacities.

Since the 1970s the cognitive sciences have offered multidisciplinary ways of understanding the mind and cognition. The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS) is a landmark, comprehensive reference work that represents the methodological and theoretical diversity of this changing field. At the core of the encyclopedia are 471 concise entries, from Acquisition and Adaptationism to Wundt and X-bar Theory. Each article, written by a leading researcher in the field, provides an accessible introduction to an important concept in the cognitive sciences, as well as references or further readings. Six extended essays, which collectively serve as a roadmap to the articles, provide overviews of each of six major areas of cognitive science: Philosophy; Psychology; Neurosciences; Computational Intelligence; Linguistics and Language; and Culture, Cognition, and Evolution. For both students and researchers, MITECS will be an indispensable guide to the current state of the cognitive sciences.

With the Internet, the proliferation of Big Data, and autonomous systems, mankind has entered into an era of 'digital obesity'. In this century, computational intelligence, such as thinking machines, have been brought forth to process complex human problems in a wide scope of areas — from social sciences, economics and biology, medicine and social networks, to cyber security.The Handbook of Computational Intelligence (in two volumes) prompts readers to look at these problems from a non-traditional angle. It takes a step by step approach, supported by case studies, to explore the issues that have arisen in the process. The Handbook covers many classic paradigms, as well as recent achievements and future promising developments to solve some of these very complex problems. Volume one explores the subjects of fuzzy logic and systems, artificial neural networks, and learning systems. Volume two delves into evolutionary computation, hybrid systems, as well as the applications of computational intelligence in decision making, the process industry, robotics, and autonomous systems.This work is a 'one-stop-shop' for beginners, as well as an inspirational source for more advanced researchers. It is a useful resource for lecturers and learners alike.

This important revised study highlights the construction of a strong psycholinguistic model that can explain how bilingual children develop cognitively and linguistically in a Spanish/English speaking setting. Conceptualized with the objective of developing a novel and strong psycholinguistic model, this research study explains how young children develop cognitively and linguistically when they have been immersed in a bicultural and bilingual environment. This study proves that bilingualism can be an enrichment for cognitive development, provided that cognitive cultural and linguistics variables are manipulated in a quasi-experimental rigorous research design that enables children to learn more successfully.