Introduction to Neurolinguistics

by Elisabeth Ahlsen

This introduction to neurolinguistics is intended for anybody who wants to acquire a grounding in the field. It was written for students of linguistics and communication disorders, but students of psychology, neuroscience and other disciplines will also find it valuable. The introductory section presents the theories, models and frameworks underlying modern neurolinguistics. Then the neurolinguistic aspects of different components of language – phonology, morphology, lexical semantics, and semantics-pragmatics in communication – are discussed. The third section examines reading and writing, bilingualism, the evolution of language, and multimodality. The book also contains three resource chapters, one on techniques for investigating the brain, another on modeling brain functions, and a third that introduces the basic concepts of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. This text provides an up-to-date linguistic perspective, with a special focus on semantics and pragmatics, evolutionary perspectives, neural network modeling and multimodality, areas that have been less central in earlier introductory works.

Genres: Linguistics, Language

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 19, 2006

Reviews

[Tomek D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book would benefit from being a little bit more informative and detailed in the material it covers. The chapter about bilingualism just touches a very broad topic that, I feel, would need a little bit more space in the book. The brain structures that are discussed in the text could have been referenced to the last chapter so that a novice reader could understand their placement and functions.

Generally a very sketchy introduction to the field, recommended to those who have not had any previous experience with neurolinguistics.

[Karen Chung · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reposting my July 30, 2009 Amazon review of this book:

Getting started in neurolinguistics

This book is useful as a very general outline of and introduction to the main topics now addressed in neurolinguistics.

The most interesting and useful part for me was chapter 13, which discusses network architecture and how it can be used to model language processing. So much in linguistics has been done following a serial processing model, e.g. generative grammar; and morphology, in its current state; and it's certainly time to bring in concepts from parallel processing models.

Chapter 14 is a bare bones introduction to the parts of the brain involved in language processing. I'd suggest moving this chapter closer to the beginning of the book. Going through a general introduction to brain anatomy and function before taking on this book would help even more; I highly recommend A Colorful Introduction to the Anatomy of the Human Brain: A Brain and Psychology Coloring Book (2nd Edition).

This book suffers, in my opinion, from two major drawbacks: (1) it covers subtopics in such general terms that the chapters are more like pointers to other works than teaching texts in their own right - it only tells you that a certain area, like the various approaches to therapy for aphasia, exists, without telling you much about its content. I also found, for example, the chapter on bilingualism (chapter 9) way too short and lacking in detail, though I realize adding too much material on topics like this would probably have made the book too long and partly defeat its purpose as an introductory text.

(2) is in large part an outgrowth of (1), and that is, that because the information is so general - there are few concrete examples or anecdotes to illustrate what is being said - the text is highly sleep-inducing. A staid, straightforward academic written style is another reason for this. This is partly due to the author's good intention of making everything as clear, accessible and straightforward as possible, which is laudable - but it makes it much harder to keep one's eyes open. Maybe we are getting spoiled by the "for Dummies" style, but snappier writing with more concrete examples really does help you learn and retain material better. These are the reasons I deducted one star from the rating.

Otherwise this is an admirable effort, and worth going through if you are at least somewhat serious about getting started in neurolinguistics. Most of the other texts I browsed through in our university library were way too technical and failed to cover the basics in a comprehensive and accessible way. So this is probably a pretty good choice considering what's available. But it could perhaps be further improved by adding in a little more "beef", and spunk.

[Said Dhimni · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was helpful to me as a support to my psycholinguistics course.

[Sean Stalley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give it a 3.5 simply because it is good for getting you started, but not terribly informative in other respects. Some of the chapters feel unfinished, and I believe that a lot of relevant information to an intro book was left out.

[Rikki Chadwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

U svrhe fakulteta...:)