The Oscillatory Nature of Language
豆瓣
Elliot Murphy
简介
Drawing on cutting-edge ideas from the biological and cognitive sciences, this book presents both an innovative neuro-computational model of language comprehension and a state-of-the-art review of current topics in neurolinguistics. It explores a range of newly-emerging topics in the biological study of language, building them into a framework which views language as grounded in endogenous neural oscillatory behaviour. This allows the author to formulate a number of hypotheses concerning the relationship between neurobiology and linguistic computation. Murphy also provides an extensive overview of recent theoretical and experimental work on the neurobiological basis of language, from which the reader will emerge up-to-date on major themes and debates. This lively overview of contemporary issues in theoretical linguistics, combined with a clear theory of how language is processed, is essential reading for scholars and students across a range of disciplines.
目录
Preface page xi
Introduction 1
1 Theory and Praxis 16
1.1 Language Architecture 19
1.2 The ‘Mechanical Power’ of Language 20
1.3 Language Evolution: Conflicting Models 22
1.4 Past, Present and Emerging Terrain 26
1.5 Simplicity and Neural Organisation 32
1.6 A System of Discrete Infinity 37
1.6.1 Concatenation 38
1.6.2 Agree 39
1.6.3 Natural Numbers 39
1.6.4 Adjuncts 40
1.6.5 Labelling 41
1.7 Animal Syntax 42
1.7.1 Formal Languages 42
1.7.2 Hierarchy 46
1.7.3 Compositionality 47
1.8 Mapping Syntax and Sentence Processing 48
1.9 Homo Projectans 51
2 Brain Dynamics of Language 53
2.1 Theoretical Overview 54
2.1.1 Anatomy 54
2.1.2 Granularity 56
2.1.3 Cartographic Directions 59
2.1.4 Evo-Devo Directions 62
2.2 Oscillations as Functional Units 64
2.2.1 Neural Syntax 66
2.2.2 Theory vs. Data Redescription in the Study of Language 81
2.3 Applications and Consequences 92
2.3.1 Autism and Schizophrenia: The ‘Price’ We Paid for Language 92
2.3.2 Prediction and Binding 92
2.3.3 Empirical Consequences 96
2.3.4 Feeble Currents 98
2.3.5 Cross-Frequency Coupling 102
2.3.6 Free Energy and the Hidden States of the World 104
2.3.7 Communication-through-Coherence 107
2.3.8 Operations and their Constraints: Merge, Anti-identity and *{t,t} 110
2.4 Globularity and Cortico-centrism 113
2.4.1 Striatal Disorders 118
2.4.2 Thalamic and Temporal Combinatorics 118
2.5 Learn to Code: Implementing Hierarchical Phrase Structure 123
2.5.1 Reconstructing Language 126
2.5.2 Functional Polyhedra: Localisation of Linguistic Function 131
3 A Neural Code for Language 135
3.1 Encoding Feature-Sets 137
3.1.1 Refining the θ-γ Code 137
3.1.2 Hub, Spoke and Causation 143
3.2 Encoding Phrasal Units 147
3.2.1 What We Talk About When We Talk About δ 147
3.2.2 The Evolution of Language 156
3.2.3 Phase–Phase Coupling and Other Approaches to Neural Computation 159
3.2.4 Linear Grammar 163
3.3 A Bridge to Biology 164
3.3.1 Dual Workspaces 164
3.3.2 γ-Itemisation 169
3.4 Refining the Model 174
3.4.1 Frequency Generators 174
3.4.2 Basic Arithmetic 175
3.4.3 Coupling Concerns 176
3.4.4 Plasticity 178
3.4.5 Ironic α Decreases 179
3.5 Further Topics in Memory, Attention and Combinatoriality 183
3.5.1 Hippocampal Binding 183
3.5.2 Cartographic Reconciliation 184
3.5.3 Grounding Memory and Attention 187
3.5.4 Reservoir Computing, Discrete Results and the Syntax of Silence 193
3.5.5 Modelling Phrase Structure Generation via Phase–Amplitude
Coupling 195
3.6 Implications and Qualifications 199
3.6.1 Language Acquisition and its Implications for the Oscillome 199
3.6.2 Processes and Processors 201
3.6.3 The Physics of Language: Finding a ‘Perfect’ Solution 206
3.6.4 The Representation Problem 208
3.6.5 Philosophical Reflections 213
3.7 Extending the Model 217
3.7.1 Travelling Oscillations 217
3.7.2 Neuroethological Perspectives on the Neural Code for Language 226
4 Conclusions and Future Directions 234
Glossary 246
References 249
Index 319