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| Preface | |
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| List of tables | |
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| List of figures | |
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| Publisher's acknowledgements | |
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| First-Language Learning | |
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| How Children Learn Language | |
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| The development of speech production | |
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| The development of speech comprehension | |
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| The relationship of speech production, speech comprehension, and thought | |
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| Parentese and Baby Talk | |
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| Imitation, rule learning, and correction | |
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| Learning abstract words | |
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| Memory and logic in language learning | |
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| The Deaf and Language: Sign, Oral, Written | |
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| Sign language: a true language without speech | |
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| Gestures of hearing people are signs but do not form a language | |
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| Speech-based sign languages | |
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| Independent Sign Languages (ISLs) such as American Sign Language (ASL) | |
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| The Oral Approach and Total Communication | |
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| The sign language vs. Oral Approach controversy | |
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| Public recognition of ASL and growth of deaf pride | |
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| The Steinberg Written Language Approach for complete communication | |
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| A programme for teaching written languages | |
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| Reading Principles and Teaching | |
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| Writing systems and speech | |
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| The Whole-Word vs. Phonics/Decoding controversy | |
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| A universal four-phase reading programme | |
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| The advantages of early reading for pre-school age children | |
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| Wild and Isolated Children and the Critical Age Issue for Language Learning | |
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| Victor: The Wild Boy of Aveyron | |
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| Genie: raised in isolation | |
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| Isabelle: confinement with a mute mother | |
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| Chelsea: began to learn language at age 32 | |
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| Helen Keller: the renowned deaf and blind girl | |
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| Oxana and Edik: raised by dogs | |
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| A critical age for first-language learning? | |
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| Animals and Language Learning | |
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| Teaching spoken English to apes | |
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| Teaching sign language to the chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutan | |
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| Teaching artificial languages to chimpanzees | |
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| Teaching language to dolphins | |
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| Teaching spoken English to an African Grey parrot | |
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| Teaching Rico the dog to understand spoken English words | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Websites for more information | |
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| Second-Language Learning | |
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| Children vs. Adults in Second-Language Learning | |
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| Children are better: a common belief | |
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| Basic psychological factors affecting second-language learning | |
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| Social situations affecting second-language learning | |
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| Is there a critical age for second-language learning? | |
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| Second-Language Teaching Methods | |
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| Characterizing the essentials of methods | |
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| Traditional methods: Grammar-Translation, Natural, Direct, Audiolingual | |
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| Offbeat methods appear then disappear: Cognitive Code, Community Language Learning, Silent Way, Suggestopedia | |
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| Contemporary methods: Total Physical Response, Communicative Language Teaching, Natural Approach, Content-Based Instruction, Task-Based Language Teaching, Computer-Assisted Language Learning | |
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| Goals must be considered in the selection of a teaching method | |
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| Bilingualism, Intelligence, Transfer, and Learning Strategies | |
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| Varieties of bilingualism | |
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| Is bilingualism beneficial or detrimental? | |
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| Effects of early bilingualism on first-language development and intelligence | |
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| Sequential and simultaneous learning situations | |
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| Strategies for second-language production | |
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| Teaching reading in a bilingual situation at home | |
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| Language, Mind and Brain | |
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| Language, Thought and Culture | |
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| A relationship at the heart of psycholinguistics | |
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| Four theories regarding the dependence of thought and culture on language | |
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| Theory 1: Speech is essential for thought | |
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| Theory 2: Language is essential for thought | |
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| Theory 3: Language determines or shapes our perception of nature | |
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| Theory 4: Language determines or shapes our cultural world view | |
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| Erroneous beliefs underlying the four theories | |
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| The best theory: Thought is independent of language | |
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| Where Does Language Knowledge Come From? Intelligence, Innate Language Ideas, Behaviour? | |
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| How do we acquire knowledge? | |
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| Mentalism vs. Materialism | |
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| Behaviourist wars: Materialism vs. Epiphenomenalism vs. Reductionism | |
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| Philosophical Functionalism and our objections to it | |
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| Mentalist wars: Empiricism's Intelligence vs. Rationalism's Innate Ideas | |
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| Chomskyan arguments for innate language ideas and the inadequacy of those arguments | |
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| It is time for Emergentism to re-emerge? | |
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| Natural Grammar, Mind and Speaker Performance | |
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| Psychological criteria for assessing grammars | |
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| The explanatory inadequacy of Chomsky's syntax-based grammar | |
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| Performance-related grammars | |
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| Primacy of speech comprehension | |
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| Inadequacy of Functionalist and Cognitive grammars | |
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| How the child learns a Natural Grammar | |
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| Towards a theory of Natural Grammar in relation to thought and its functioning in the comprehension and production of sentences | |
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| Language and the Brain | |
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| General brain structure and function | |
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| Hemispheric structure and function | |
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| Language areas and their functioning | |
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| Right-hemisphere language abilities | |
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| The bilingual brain | |
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| Sign language | |
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| Language disorders: aphasias | |
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| Methods of investigating brain and language | |
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| References | |
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| Author index | |
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| Subject index | |