A gereral textbook on psycholinguistics covering topics such as: the nature of language (discussed with reference to structural and functional notions); comprehension processes (the comprehension of sentences and speech acts, the understanding of indirectness, the answering of questions, the role of memory for prose, and the perception of speech); production processes (plans and their execution); language acquisition; meaning and thought (the representation of meaning, uses of meaning, and meaning in child language); language and thought (including a discussion of universals, language variation, and linguistic relativity).