Unit 1  (August 22, 29, September 5)
What is a language?
What is the relationship between language and thought?
Approaches to studying language

Readings
Everyone should read the ** entries. We will divide up the others. To be explained in class.

**Carruthers, P., & Boucher, J. (1998). Introduction: Opening up options. In P. Carruthers & J. Boucher (Eds.), Language and Thought: Interdiscipinary themes  (pp. 1-18). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pdf).
 Focuses on language and thought relationships as construed by different disciplinary perspectives and changes within disciplinary perspectives over time.

**Chafe, W. (1998). Language and the flow of thought. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure (pp. 93-111). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. (pdf)
 Shows how language flow conveys meaning. (Do not need to read the transcript analysis unless you are particularly interested.)

Crane, L. B., Yeager, E., & Whitman, R. L.  (1981). Ch. 3: History of linguistics .  An introduction to linguistics  (pp. 28-38).  Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Dunbar, R. (1998). Theory of mind and theevolution of language. In J. R. Hurford, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & C. Knight (Eds.), Approaches to the evolution of language (pp. 92-110). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pdf)
 Biological and social imperative for language.

Dupré, J. (1991).  Conversations with apes: Reflections on the scientific study of language.  In J. Hyman (Ed.), Investigating psychology: Sciences of the mind after Wittgenstein  (pp. 95 116).  London: Routledge.

Gee, J. P. (1992). Meaning. Ch. 1 in The social mind. NY, NY: Bergin & Garvey.
 Social origins of meaning and social construction of language. (pdf)

Gee, J. P. (1992). Society. Ch. 5 (pp. 107-125 only) in The social mind. NY, NY: Bergin & Garvey.
 Discusses Discourse in society - roles, functions, construction. Gee uses Discourse (with a capital D) as synonymous with the way we are using language. (pdf)

**Miller, G. A. (1996 reprint of 1965 article). Some preliminaries to psycholinguistics. In H. Geirsson & M. Losonsky (Eds.) Readings in language and mind (pp. 405-413). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. (pdf)

**Smith, N., & Wilson, D.  (1985).  What is a language?  In V. P. Clark, P. A. Eschholz, & Alfred F. Rosa (Eds.), Language: Introductory readings (4th ed.) (pp. 325-340).  New York: St. Martinís Press. (pdf)

Ulbaek, I. (1998). The origin of language and cognition. In J. R. Hurford, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & C. Knight (Eds.), Approaches to the evolution of language (pp. 30-43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pdf)
 Cognition gave rise to language or language evolved from cognition.

Waldron, T. P.  (1985).  Ch. 5: Speech and thought.  Principles of language and mind (pp. 74 89).  London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Wolfram, W.  (1981). Varieties of American English.   In C. A. Ferguson & S. B. Heath (Eds.), Language in the USA  (pp. 44-68).  Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Additional Readings
Dretske, F. (1996). Representational systems. In H. Geirsson & M. Losonsky (Eds.) Readings in language and mind (pp. 285-305). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. (pdf)
 Discusses signs, meaning, and explanation.

Fillmore, C. (1985). Lingujistics as a tool for discourse analysis. In T. A van Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Volum 1), Disciplines of Discourse (pp. 11-39).

Kintsch, Wallter (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Chapter 2 on representation. New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press.
 

Supplementary "text"books
Carroll, David W. (1999). Psychology of language (3rd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA, US: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co.

Kintsch, Wallter (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition.  New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press.

Singer, Murray. (1990). Psychology of language: An introduction to sentence and discourse processes. Hillsdale, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.