Morten H. Christiansen received his PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1995. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Co-Director of the Cognitive Science Program at Cornell University. His research focuses on the interaction of biological and environmental constraints in the processing, acquisition and evolution of language, which he approaches using a variety of methodologies, including computational modeling, corpus analyses, psycholinguistic experimentation, neurophysiological recordings, and molecular genetics. He has edited volumes on Connectionist Psycholinguistics (Ablex, with Nick Chater) and Language Evolution (Oxford, with Simon Kirby). He is currently working on a monograph, Creating Language: Towards a Unified Framework for Language Processing, Acquisition and Evolution (Oxford, with Nick Chater).

Christopher T. Collins is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at New York University. He received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. His research interests are comparative syntax and the syntax African languages. He approaches the issue of language universals through the indepth study of various African languages, including Ewe and most recently N|uu, an endangered Khoisan language of South Africa.

Shimon Edelman is Professor of Psychology at Cornell University, where he is also member in the graduate fields of Computer Science, Information Science, and Cognitive Science. His research interests include computational, behavioral, and neurobiological aspects of vision, as well as language acquisition and processing and computational linguistics. His latest book Computing the Mind: How the Mind Really Works will be published by Oxford University Press in 2008.

Emmon Bach
Department of Linguistics
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Thomas G. Bever
Departments of Cognitive Science, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Psychology and Language Reading & Culture
University of Arizona

Cedric Boeckx
Department of Linguistics
Harvard University

Joan L. Bybee
Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico

Wynn Chao
Department of Linguistics
University of London

Morten H. Christiansen
Department of Psychology
Cornell University

Andy Clark
Department of Philosophy
Edinburgh University

Christopher T. Collins
Department of Linguistics
New York University

Shimon Edelman
Department of Psychology
Cornell University

Barbara L. Finlay
Department of Psychology
Cornell University

John A. Hawkins
Departments of English and Applied Linguistics
Cambridge University

Norbert Hornstein
Department of Linguistics
University of Maryland, College Park

James R. Hurford
Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit
University of Edinburgh

Ray Jackendoff
Department of Philosophy
Tufts University

Jennifer B. Misyak
Department of Psychology
Cornell University

Ralph-Axel Müller
Department of Psychology
University of California, San Diego

Steven Pinker
Department of Psychology
Harvard University

Florencia Reali
Department of Psychology
University of California, Berkeley

Edward P. Stabler
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Los Angeles

Mark Steedman
Department of Cognitive Science
University of Edinburgh

"This is an impressive collection of work on Universals of Language as seen from a wide spectrum of disciplinary perspectives. It will surely play a significant role in the re-orientation of such research from the mere accumulation of cross-linguistic regularities to the search for the organizing principles of human cognition that give rise to those regularities. The breadth and depth of the studies here show that Universals research is finally moving toward a genuinely scientific status."-Stephen R. Anderson, Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics and Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Yale University

"Despite enormous diversity, there are striking similarities across languages. Why do languages take the forms they do, and only those forms? This question has long been both a puzzle and the source of enormous controversy. Is it just coincidence? Is there something about the shared human experience? Or the biology common to our species? Is there some internal logic to language that makes only some languages viable? These are enormously challenging questions. This collection, by some of the most prominent scholars in the field, presents a rich and diverse set of possibilities. This is a fascinating and an important book, and significantly advances our progress toward understanding why only our species has language."-Jeffrey L. Elman, Dean, Division of Social Sciences, University of California, San Diego