Many of the processes and mechanisms involved in language
comprehension are general ones. This book describes a few of
those cognitive processes and mechanisms, using the Structure
Building Framework as a guide. 2. This commonality might arise
because, as Lieberman (1984) and others have suggested, language
comprehension evolved from nonlinguistic cognitive skills. Or
the commonality might arise simply because the mind is best
understood by reference to a common architecture (e.g., a
connectionist architecture). 3. I have adopted the view that
many of the processes and mechanisms involved in language
comprehension are general ones. This book describes a few of
those cognitive processes and mechanisms, using a simple
framework -- the Structure Building Framework -- as a guide. 4.
According to the Structure Building Framework, the goal of
comprehension is to build a coherent mental representation or
"structure" of the information being comprehended. Several
component processes are involved. First, comprehenders