Every now and again I receive a lengthy manuscript from a kind of theoretician known to psychiatrists as the "triangle people" - kooks who have independently discovered that everything in the universe comes in threes (solid , liquid, gas; protons, neutrons, electrons; the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost ; Moe, Larry, Curly; and so on) . At the risk of sounding like a triangle person, let me explain why I think that the topic of this volume - - storage and computation in the language facยญ ulty - though having just two sides rather than three, is the key to understanding every interesting issue in the study of language. I will begin with the fundamental scientific problem in linguistics: explaining the vast expressive power of language. What is the trick behind our ability to filleach others' heads with so many different ideas? I submit there is not one trick but two, and they have been emphasized by different thinkers throughout the history of linguistics
CONTENT
1 Minimising or maximising storage? An introduction -- I Setting the stage -- 2 Whatโ{128}{153}s in the lexicon? -- II Accessing regular and irregular word forms -- 3 Dutch inflection: The rules that prove the exception -- 4 Words, rules and stems in the Italian mental lexicon -- III Changing the rules -- 5 The balance between storage and computation in phonology -- 6 Computation and storage in language contact -- IV Pronouncing spoken words -- 7 Storage and computation in spoken word production -- V Buffering and computing -- 8 Effects of short-term storage in processing rightward movement -- 9 Storage and computation in sentence processing. A neuroimaging perspective -- VI Computing and storing aspects of discourse -- 10 Computation and storage in discourse interpretation -- Author Index
