By Stephen R. Anderson - The Language Organ: Linguistics as Cognitive Physiology

by Stephen R. Anderson

This study treats human language as the manifestation of a faculty of the mind, which is seen as a mental organ whose nature is determined by human biology and whose functional properties should be explored as physiology explores the functional properties of physical organs. The book surveys the nature of the language faculty in its various the systems of sounds, words, and syntax, the development of language in the child and historically, what is known about its relation to the brain.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published September 18, 1998

About the author

Stephen Robert Anderson (born 1943) is an American linguist. He is the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale University and was the 2007 president of the Linguistic Society of America.

He received a B.S. in linguistics from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1966 and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. Anderson taught at Harvard University from 1969 until 1975. He joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles in 1975. In 1988, he became a professor of cognitive science at Johns Hopkins University. Since 1994, he has been at Yale University. Anderson was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999, and the Linguistic Society of America in 2008. He is Vice President of CIPL, the Permanent International Committee of Linguists.