Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics

A large body of knowledge has accumulated in recent years on the cognitive processes and brain mechanisms underlying language. Much of this knowledge has come from studies of Indo-European languages, in particular English. Japanese, a language of growing interest to linguists, differs significantly from most Indo-European languages in its grammar, its lexicon, and its written and spoken forms - features which have profound implications for the learning, representation and processing of language. This handbook, the second in a three-volume series on East Asian psycholinguistics, presents a state-of-the-art discussion of the psycholinguistic study of Japanese. With contributions by over fifty leading scholars, it covers topics in first and second language acquisition, language processing and reading, language disorders in children and adults, and the relationships between language, brain, culture, and cognition. It will be invaluable to all scholars and students interested in the Japanese language, as well as cognitive psychologists, linguists, and neuroscientists.

Mineharu Nakayama is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University. Reiko Mazuka is Head of the Laboratory for Language Development at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan, and also Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, Duke University. Yasuhiro Shirai is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh. Ping Li is Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, and Information Science and Technology at Pennsylvania State University.