Words, Meaning, and Messages

Words, Meaning, and Messages: Theory and Experiments in Psycholinguistics focuses on the advancements of approaches, methodologies, and theories in psycholinguistics. The publication first elaborates on the studies of languages within a general science of signs and the search of psychological design features of natural languages. Discussions focus on characteristic features of sign processes, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of an artificial language, linguistic medium, and characteristic features of psychological inquiries. The text then takes a look at the word as a stimulus and response variable and word meanings, including interdependence among meaning components, associative word meaning, emotive meaning, and preliminary evidence for efferent mechanisms in word perception. The book examines word meanings and nonlinguistic factors in message transmission; different psychological approaches to syntactic processes; and psychological inquiries into the semantic and pragmatic aspects of utterances. Topics include linguistic form and efficiency of message transmission; acquisition of grammar and the learning of word meanings; and word combinations, conditioning, and temporary modification of word meanings. The manuscript is a valuable reference for researchers interested in the theories and experiments in psycholinguistics.