CONTENIDO

Chapter 1 Introduction

PART I THE BASIC SPECIFICATIONS
Chapter 2 Language processing: speed and flexibility
1. The complexity of the task
2. Speed
3. Processing shortcuts
3.1 Prefabricated units
3.2 Shallow processing
3.3 Frequency
4. Implications for linguistic theory

Chapter 3 Language acquisition: robustness
1. Individual differences
2. The role of input
3. Language development in blind children
4. The robustness of language

Chapter 4 Language in the brain
1. The localisation issue
2. Preservation of grammatical knowledge in Broca’s aphasia
3. The co-occurrence of lexical and grammatical deficits
4. The resilience of language

Chapter 5 Language and other cognitive processes
1. The modularity hypothesis
2. Problems with the double dissociation argument

Chapter 6 Biological underpinnings
1. A genetically specified language module?
2. Human adaptations to language
2.1 Preadaptations
2.2 Cultural learning and mind-reading
2.3 Cortical control over vocalisations and coordinating action sequences
3. Language adaptations to humans
4. Universal Grammar again
4.1 Problems with the poverty-of-the stimulus argument
4.2 Some new questions
5. Conclusion

PART II THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF LANGUAGE
Chapter 7 Words
1. The semantics of locative terms
1.1 Conventional construal
1.2 Polysemy
1.3 Cross-linguistic variation
2. The acquisition of locative terms
2.1 Warlpiri
2.2 Tzotzil
2.3 Japanese
2.4 Korean
2.5 General discussion
3. Innate structure, yes – but of what kind?
3.1 Semantic primitives
3.2 Perceptual primitives
4. Lexical learning in a constrained connectionist network
5. Conclusion

Chapter 8 On rules and regularity
1. Words and rules
2. The connectionist bombshell
3. The linguists strike back
4. The dual-mechanism model
5. The German plural: a minority default?
6. The Polish genitive: an inflectional system without a default
6.1 The system
6.2 Genitive masculine forms in default contexts
6.3 Adult productivity with genitive endings
6.4 Acquisition of the genitive inflection
7. The final test case: the Polish dative
8. Interim conclusions
9. Challenges for connectionism

Chapter 9 Syntactic Constructions
1. Ties between lexical and grammatical knowledge
2. Multi-word units in acquisition
2.1 Premature usage
2.2 Developmental U-curves
2.3 Inappropriate and ungrammatical usage
2.4 Pronoun reversals
2.5 Filler syllables
2.6 Lexically based patterns
2.7 ‘Mosaic’ acquisition
3. A case study: questions
3.1 Early interrogative utterances
3.2 From formula to schema
3.3 Where do ‘non-formulaic’ utterances come from?
3.4 Evidence for piecemeal learning
3.5 Questions with long-distance dependencies
3.6 Conclusion

Chapter 10 The cognitive enterprise
1. Towards a psychologically realistic grammar
2. A crash course in Cognitive Grammar
2.1 Linguistic expressions are symbolic units
2.2 Imagery
2.3 Things, processes and atemporal relations
2.4 Constructional schemas
2.5 Language as a structured inventory of conventional linguistic units
2.6 A usage-based model
2.7 Meeting the specifications
3. Language production in a CG framework
4. A cognitive view of language acquisition
5. More on regularity
6. Future directions