The Oxford Handbook of the Mental Lexicon

This volume brings together the latest research from leading scholars on the mental lexicon - the representation of language in the mind/brain at the level of individual words and meaningful sub-word units. In recent years, the study of words as mental objects has grown rapidly across several fields, including linguistics, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, education, and cognitive science. This comprehensive collection spans multiple disciplines, topics, theories, and methods to highlight important advances in the study of the mental lexicon, identify areas of debate, and inspire innovation in the field from present and future generations of scholars.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I presents modern linguistic and cognitive theories of how the mind/brain represents words at the phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels. This part also discusses broad architectural issues pertaining to the internal organization of the lexicon, the relation between words and concepts, and the role of compositionality. Part II examines how children learn the form and meaning of words in their native language, bridging learner- and environment-driven contributions and taking into account variability across both individual learners and communities. Chapters in the final part explore how the mental lexicon contributes to language use during listening, speaking, and conversation, and includes perspectives from bilingualism, sign languages, and disorders of lexical access and production.

Anna Papafragou, Professor of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, John C. Trueswell, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Lila R. Gleitman, Professor Emerita of Psychology and Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania

Anna Papafragou is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the University’s interdisciplinary graduate program in Language and Communication Sciences. Her research focuses on how children acquire meaning in language, how language is used and
understood, and how language interfaces with human perception and cognition. She is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and serves on the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society.

John C. Trueswell is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the co-director of the University’s MindCORE initiative in Integrative Language Science and Technology. His research focuses on understanding how children develop the ability to process language in
real-time, and how this ability interacts with the acquisition of language. He is an elected fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Cognitive Science Society.

Lila R. Gleitman is a Professor Emerita of Psychology and (by secondary appointment) Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She has conducted foundational work on language acquisition, and the relationship between language and other cognitive systems. She is an elected member of the National
Academy of Sciences, an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fyssen Foundation Laureate, and a winner of the Rumelhart Prize from the Cognitive Science Society.