By Sydney M. Lamb

Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins
January 1999 (xii+418 pages)

The brain is the organ of knowledge and organizer of our abilities, our means of recognizing a face in a crowd, of conversing about anything we experience or imagine, of forming thoughts and developing ideas, of instantly understanding words coming rapidly in conversation. How does it manage all this? Does it represent information in symbols or in the connectivity of a vast network?

PATHWAYS OF THE BRAIN builds a theory to answer such questions. Using a top-down modeling strategy, it charts relationships among words and other products of the brain's linguistic system to reveal properties of that system. Going beyond earlier linguistics, it sets three plausibility requirements for a valid neurocognitive theory: operational, developmental, and neurological: It must show how the linguistic system can operate for speaking and understanding, how it can be learned  by children, and how it is implemented in neural structures. Unlike theories that leave linguistics isolated from science, it builds a bridge to biology.

Of interest to anthropologists, linguists, neurologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, and any thoughtful person interested in language or the brain.

CONTENTS:
        Acknowledgments
        Preface
        Chapter 1       The Window of the Mind
        Chapter 2       Evidence of the First Two Kinds
        Chapter 3       The Stratification of Language
        Chapter 4       A Network of Relationships
        Chapter 5       Components of Relational Networks
        Chapter 6       Syntax
        Chapter 7       Building Models
        Chapter 8       Interacting Subsystems
        Chapter 9       Meaning
        Chapter 10      Building Connections
        Chapter 11      Traveling the Pathways
        Chapter 12      The Ever-Changing Network
        Chapter 13      Sources of Linguistic Patterning
        Chapter 14      Sequence Management
        Chapter 15      Linguistic Illusions
        Chapter 16      Introducing the Brain
        Chapter 17      Neurons and Nections
        Chapter 18      The Anatomy of Language
        Epilog
        Appendix
        Notes
        References
        Index