How do we Produce and Understand Speech?

A comprehensive model of language evolution should not only describe the structure of the communication system that has evolved but also define the mechanisms underlying its use. This chapter therefore enters the realm of psycholinguistics and speech processing and looks at the mechanisms involved in generating speech (speech production) and understanding the speech of someone else (speech perception). The chapter focuses on models of speech processing and also turns to some evidence from neuroscience to aid our understanding of how language is processed in the brain.