This volume examines two main questions: What is linguistics about? And how do the results of
linguistic theorizing bear on inquiry in related fields particularly in psychology? The book
develops views that depart from received wisdom in both philosophy and linguistics. With regard
to questions concerning the subject matter methodological goals and ontological commitments
of formal syntactic theorizing it argues that the cognitive conception adopted by most
linguists and philosophers is not the only acceptable view and that the arguments in its favor
collapse under scrutiny. Nevertheless as the book shows a detailed examination of the
relevant psycholinguistic results and computational models does support the claim that the
theoretical constructs of formal linguistics are operative in real-time language comprehension.
These constructs fall into two categories: mental phrase markers and mental syntactic
principles. Both are indeed psychologically real but in importantly different ways. The book
concludes by drawing attention to the importance of the often-elided distinction between
personal and subpersonal psychological states and processes as well as the logical character
of dispositional and occurrent states. By clarifying these concepts particularly by reference
to up-and-running psychological and computational models the book yields a richer and more
satisfying perspective on the psychological reality of language.
