Sentence Processing by William E. Cooper, Edward C.T. Walker

The distinguished contributors to Sentence Processing, originally published in 1979, offered new articles dealing with theory and experimentation on sentence processing. A number of the chapters presented completely new experimental studies that are discussed within the broad context of theoretical issues involving human perception and production of language. The chapters together represented a type of psycholinguistic research at the time that focused both on the nature of human information processing and the coding of linguistic structure. Within the area of sentence perception, the authors discuss lexical and syntactic processing, with experimental materials that rely on methods such as phoneme-monitoring and the perception of time-compressed speech. Studies of sentence production receive similar coverage with analyses of speech errors, pauses, and other features of conversation. Here is a volume that offered the latest and most comprehensive discussion of sentence processing at the time. Today it can be read in its historical context.