The Articulate Mammal

An established bestseller, The Articulate Mammal is a concise and highly readable introduction to the main topics in psycholinguistics. This fifth edition brings the book up-to-date with recent theories, including new material on:

the possibility of a ‘language gene’
post-Chomskyan ideas
language within an evolutionary framework
spatial cognition and how this affects language
how children become acclimatized to speech rhythms before birth
the acquisition of verbs
construction and cognitive grammar
aphasia and dementia.

Requiring no prior knowledge of the subject, chapter by chapter, The Articulate Mammal tackles the basic questions central to the study of psycholinguistics. Jean Aitchison investigates these issues with regard to animal communication, child language and the language of adults, and includes in the text full references and helpful suggestions for further reading.