Table of Contents

Part I. Questions of Ontology: Writing and the Speech-Language Divide; 1. How we are Introduced to the Study of Spoken Language; 2. The Modality-Independence Argument and Storylines of the Origin of Symbolic Language; 3. The Recent History of Attempts to Ground Orthographic Concepts of Language Theory; Part II. Questions of Epistemology: The Role of Instrumental Observations; 4. Recognizing the Bias; 5. (Re-) Defining the Writing Bias, and the Essential Role of Instrumental Invalidation; Part III. The Structure of Speech Acts: 6. Utterances as Communicative Acts; 7. Relating to Basic Units: Syllable-Like Cycles; 8. Relating Neural Oscillations to Syllable Cycles and Chunks; 9. Breath-Units of Speech and their Structural Effects; Part IV. The Processing of Speech Meaning: 10. The Neural Coding of Semantics; 11. Processes of Utterance Interpretation: For a Neuropragmatics; Index.

Promotional Information

By upending traditional perspectives, this book gives a biologically-grounded understanding of how spoken language conveys meaning.

About the Author

Victor J. Boucher is Senior Researcher and Professor of Speech Sciences at the Université de Montréal. His career work on the physiological processes of speech have led him to view human language as arising from constraints on motor-sensory systems and to a critical reappraisal of methods of language study.