Sentence Production: Developments in Research and Theory

Originally published in 1977, Sentence Production: Developments in Research and Theory was the editor’s attempt to remedy the neglect of the problem of sentence production (or more generally, speech production) in psycholinguistics. There was a body of research in the literature but compared to sentence comprehension, sentence perception, and sentence memory, the offerings were meager at best. The contributions here represent a number of the major trends of research and theory in this area at the time. It was hoped that these papers would stimulate other students of language and language behavior to become involved with the problem of understanding the organization and operation of human’s productive linguistic capabilities. Today it can be read in its historical context.

Sheldon Rosenberg was Professor of psychology for much of his career at the University of Illinois Chicago having taught previously at George Peabody College in Nashville TN. He was a pioneering Psycholinguist having taken his PhD with James Jenkins at University of Minnesota in 1958, publishing his first edited collection Directions in Psycholonguistics in 1965. From 1966 to 1969 he was research associate and Assistant Director of the Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior at University of Michigan. In 1980 he founded and served for five years as Editor of the journal Applied Psycholinguistics. One of his greatest commitments was to the study of the language of those with intellectual disabilities, co-authoring with his former student Leonard Abbeduto, the title Language and Communication in Mental Retardation (Psychology Press, 1993).