The popular notion of how children come to speak their first language is that their parents teach them words, then phrases, then sentences, then longer utterances. Although there is widespread agreement amongst linguists that this account is wrong, there is much less agreement as to how children really learn language. This revised edition of Ray Cattell's bestselling textbook aims to give readers the background necessary to form their own views on the debate, and includes accessible summaries of key thinkers, including Chomsky, Halliday, Karmiloff-Smith and Piaget.

The popular notion of how children come to speak their first language is that their parents teach them words, then phrases, then sentences, then longer utterances. Although there is widespread agreement amongst linguists that this account is wrong, there is much less agreement as to how children really learn language. This revised edition of Ray Cattell's bestselling textbook aims to give readers the background necessary to form their own views on the debate, and includes accessible summaries of key thinkers, including Chomsky, Halliday, Karmiloff-Smith and Piaget.

This is an introductory textbook explaining the interaction between the mind, consciousness and language. This textbook is a comprehensive introduction to the relationship between the mind, consciousness and language. The book examines the key concepts from both philosophy and linguistics, including the mind/body problem, reformulates Descartes' "I think therefore I am", analyses Skinner's behaviourist position, Chomsky's transformational grammar, Fodor's representational theory of meaning, and the basics of connectionism. Difficult concepts and terms are explained succinctly, in a jargon-free manner. The student-friendly features include: text boxes on key thinkers, such as Chomsky, Fodor and Skinner; summaries of key ideas, such as behaviourism and connectionism; chapter summaries to aid student navigation of the book; suggestions for further reading; and a glossary of terms. This fascinating textbook is essential reading for students of cognitive linguistics, philosophy and psychology.