Cognition and Sentence Production: A Cross-Linguistic Study

This book presents the findings of a major cross-linguistic experiment in sentence production, involving 10 languages from around the world. It demonstrates that many aspects of language (including word- and clause- order, topicalization, spatial deixis, referential elaboration, among others) are governed by universal cognitive principles of perception, attention, and communication. The findings of this study, based on a linguistically sophisticated psychological theory and a careful, extensive experimental design, bear on such important issues as the bases of linguistic universals, functionalist theories of language, the relationship between language and thought, and the psychological reality of pragmatic (communicative) principles. This book should therefore be of interest to researchers in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, philosophy of language, anthropology, and communication.