The Articulate Mammal: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics

This book oscillated between interesting and interesting-yet-outdated. It was a quick and entertaining read, but on the whole it could do with a thorough update and with a little more precision.

Like most of Aitchison's popular science books about language and linguistics, this book was written quite some time ago, and subsequent editions have been revised only slightly to reflect advances in the field. Most of the references are to studies from the sixties and the eighties, which is frankly unacceptable from an introductory textbook in psycholinguistics (or any of the cognitive sciences). To take a particular egregious example, much of the discussion on Chomsky's views and chomskyan theories take the Standard Theory as a starting point show more -- which was formulated in 1965, and which has been more or less abandoned a long time ago.

Another irritable trait of Aitchison's is to start a chapter off with a retorical question: 'Is this matter best explainable by Theory Ultra-White or by Theory Extremely Black?', only to end on a predictable golden middle discussion of "neither though possibly both". Many of the chapters in this book are organised in this way, and it gets old pretty quick.

Aside from these complaints, I've got to admit that Aitchison takes pains to present matters straightforwardly and accessably. In a field riddled with controversies and unsettled debates about some pretty basic problems, that is a big plus.

In short: this book provides a basic and a simplistic look at some of the issues under discussion in the field of psycholinguistics. If you're looking for something quick and dirty and something accessible, this is the book for you. If you want something meaty, avoid this one. show less

More in depth than what I had expected, which makes it even more fascinating. Starting with defining and describing grammar, the author goes on to discuss what language in animals can teach us, heading then straight into how children acquire speech, and, finally, rounding it all up with a journey into neurosciences. 'Talking' animals, children's language development, brain science... It all revolves around Chomsky's ideas (displaying not only his, but some of his detractors as well) in a very articulate and engaging way. Here's an excellent introduction to psycholinguistics.