The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive SciencesRobert A. Wilson and Frank C. Keil (editor) Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press (A Bradford Book), 1999, cxxxii+964 pp; hardbound, ISBN 0-262-23200-6, $149.95, £93.50; CD-ROM, ISBN 0-262-73124-X, $149.95, £93.50

The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS) brings together 471 brief articles on a very wide range of topics within cognitive science. The general editors worked with advisory editors in six contributing fields, including Gennaro Chierchia on Linguistics and Language and Michael I. Jordan and Stuart Russell on Computational Intelligence. MITECS opens with excellent overview articles by each of the advisory editors on their fields. The general quality of the contributors and their contributions is outstanding. The editors secured the cooperation of leading scientists in every area including computational linguistics. Tables 1 and 2 suggest articles that are of particular interest in computational linguistics. The division into sections is that of the book’s companion Web site; in the printed volume, the articles are arranged in a single alphabetical sequence. There are many other articles of immediate interest, including several on grammar models popular in CL (Mark Steedman on Categorial Grammar, Georgia Green on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, and Mary Dalrymple on Lexical Functional Grammar) and several that treat computational simulations of psycholinguistic phenomena. Dennis Norris’s general article on computational psycholinguistics focuses nicely on interdisciplinary issues; it motivates why a range of computational models remain interesting within cognitive science when language is the subject of investigation.