Introducing the fundamental issues in psycholinguistics, this book explores the amazing story of the unconscious processes that take place when humans use language. It is an ideal text for undergraduates taking a first course in the study of language.Topics covered include the biological foundations of language; acquisition of first and second languages in children and adults; the mental lexicon; and speech production, perception, and processingStructured as an engaging narrative that takes the reader from an idea in the mind of a speaker to its comprehension in the mind of the hearerReflects the latest empirical developments in psycholinguistics, and is illustrated throughout with examples from bilingual as well as monolingual language processing, second language acquisition, and sign languagesStudent-friendly features include chapter-by-chapter study questions and discussion summaries; the appendix offers an excellent overview of experimental designs in psycholinguistics, and prepares students for their own researchWritten by an internationally-regarded author team, drawing on forty years of experience in teaching psycholinguistics

Eva M. Fernándezis Associate Professor at Queens College, City University of New York. She is also affiliated with the CUNY Graduate Center's Programs in Linguistics and in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages, and currently directs Queens Colleges Center for Teaching and Learning.

Helen Smith Cairnsis Professor Emerita at Queens College, City University of New York. She is affiliated with the CUNY Graduate Programs in Linguistics and in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Her research and scholarship are in the areas of adult sentence processing and first language acquisition in children.

List of Figures.

List of Tables.

Prologue.

1. Beginning Concepts.

2. The Nature of Linguistic Competence.

3. The Biological Basis of Language.

4. The Acquisition of Language.

5. The Speaker: Producing Speech.

6. The Hearer: Speech Perception and Lexical Access.

7. The Hearer: Structural Processing.

8. Remembering Sentences, Processing Discourse, and Having Conversations.

Epilogue. Appendix: Experimental Designs in Psycholinguistics.

References.

Name Index.

Subject Index.