Quantitative and Experimental Linguistics

Recent technological advances, coupled with the adoption of research methods from fields such as psychology, neurology, and computer science, had resulted in a boom in studies that employ experiments and quantitative means to explore questions of linguistic structure and processing. This volume addresses a number of these fields: sociolinguistics, connectionism, exemplar models, experimental phonetics, chronometric experiments, non-chronometric experiments, neuroimaging, and usage-based models.

Although a wealth of information exists in each field, most of what is available is written to investigate a research question and is not meant as an introduction to a particular field or its methodologies. The present volume is designed to fill this need. It is not meant to detail what the state-or-the-art in the fields is. Instead, it serves as a reference work for those who are interested in learning more about experimental and quantitative approaches to linguistics, or a particular sub-branch of these. The chapters are designed to introduce the reader into the field, and the methods commonly employed, as well as illustrating some of the issues examined, and pointing the way to further studies.