This book asserts that language is a signaling system rather than a code based in part on such
research as the finding that 5-year-old English and Dutch children use pronouns correctly in
their own utterances but often fail to interpret these forms correctly when used by someone
else. Emphasizing the unique and sometimes competing demands of listener and speaker the
author examines resulting asymmetries between production and comprehension. The text offers
examples of the interpretation of word order and pronouns by listeners and word order freezing
and referential choice by speakers. It is explored why the usual symmetry breaks down in
children but also sometimes in adults. Gathering contemporary insights from theoretical
linguistic research psycholinguistic studies and computational modeling Asymmetries between
Language Production and Comprehension presents a unified explanation of this phenomenon.
¿Through a lucid comprehensive review of acquisition studies on reference-related phenomena
Petra Hendriks builds a striking case for the pervasiveness of asymmetries in comprehension
production. In her view listeners systematically misunderstand what they hear and speakers
systematically fail to prevent such misunderstandings. She argues that linguistic theory should
take stock of current psycholinguistic and developmental evidence on optionality and ambiguity
and recognize language as a signaling system. The arguments are compelling yet controversial:
grammar does not specify a one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning and the demands
of the mapping task differ for listeners and speakers. Her proposal is formalized within
optimality theory but researchers working outside this framework will still find it of great
interest. In the language-as-code vs. language-as-signal debate Hendriks puts the ball firmly
in the other court.¿ Ana Pérez-Leroux University of Toronto Canada
