The Articulate Mammal. Intro to Psycholinguistics

313 Pages·2007·1.96 MB·English

by  Jean Aitchison

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The Articulate Mammal
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3111 An established bestseller, The Articulate Mammal is a concise and highly
4 readable introduction to the main topics in psycholinguistics. This fifth
5 edition brings the book up to date with recent theories, including
6 new material on:
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8 • The possibility of a ‘language gene’
9 • Post-Chomskyan ideas
20111 • Language within an evolutionary framework
1 • Spatial cognition and how this affects language
2 • How children become acclimatized to speech rhythms before
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4 • The acquisition of verbs
5 • Construction and cognitive grammar
6 • Aphasia and dementia.
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8 Requiring no prior knowledge of the subject, chapter by chapter, The
9 Articulate Mammal tackles the basic questions central to the study of
30111 psycholinguistics. Jean Aitchison investigates these issues with regard
1 to animal communication, child language and the language of adults,
2 and includes in the text full references and helpful suggestions for
3 further reading.
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5 Jean Aitchison was Professor of Language and Communication at
6 the University of Oxford from 1993 to 2003, and is now an Emeritus
7 Professorial Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. She is the author
8 of numerous books on Language and gave the 1996 BBC Reith
9 Lectures on the topic of ‘The Language Web’.
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The Articulate Mammal
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An introduction to psycholinguistics
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Fifth edition
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Jean Aitchison
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First published 1976
5 by the Academic Division of Unwin Hyman Ltd
6 This edition published 2008
7 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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by Routledge
1011 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA
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Reprinted 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
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4 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
5 “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
6 collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
7 © Jean Aitchison 1976, 1983, 1989, 1998, 2008
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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20111 reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
1 invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
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writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
6 Aitchison, Jean, 1938–
7 The articulate mammal: an introduction to psycholinguistics/
Jean Aitchison. – 5th ed.
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p. cm.
9 1. Psycholinguistics. I. Title.
30111 P37.A37 2007
401′.9–dc22 2007008960
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ISBN 0-203-93471-7 Master e-book ISBN
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6 ISBN10: 0–415–42016–4 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–42022–9 (pbk)
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ISBN10: 0–203–934717–7 (ebk)
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9 ISBN13: 978–0–415–42016–7 (hbk)
40111 ISBN13: 978–0–415–42022–8 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–93471–5 (ebk)
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Contents
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3111 Preface to the first edition vii
4 Preface to the fifth edition ix
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Introduction 1
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1 The great automatic grammatizator
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Need anything be innate? 7
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2 2 Animals that try to talk
3 Is language restricted to humans? 24
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5 3 Grandmama’s teeth
6 Is there biological evidence for innate language capacity? 49
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8 4 Predestinate grooves
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Is there a pre-ordained language ‘programme’? 70
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5 A blueprint in the brain?
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Could any linguistic information conceivably be innate? 96
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6 Chattering children
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How do children get started on learning to speak? 115
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7 Puzzling it out
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9 Exactly how do children learn language? 140
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1 8 Celestial unintelligibility
21111 Why do linguists propose such bizarre grammars? 170
vi Contents
1111 9 The white elephant problem
2 Do we need a grammar in order to speak? 187
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4 10 The case of the missing fingerprint
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How do we understand speech? 205
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11 The Cheshire Cat’s grin
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How do we plan and produce speech? 234
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12 Banker’s clerk or hippopotamus?
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2 The future 257
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Suggestions for further reading 263
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References 269
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Index 292
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Preface to the first edition
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3111 Some years ago, I gave an evening course entitled ‘Psycholinguistics’.
4 I was quite amazed at the response. A large, eager and intelligent group
5 of people arrived, many of them with a serious reason for wanting to
6 know about the subject. There were speech therapists, infant school
7 teachers, an advertising executive, a librarian, an educational psycholo-
8 gist – to name just a few of those whose jobs I noted. There were
9 also parents interested in understanding how children acquire language,
20111 and one student who wanted to know how she might help a relative
1 who had lost her language as a result of a stroke. In addition, there
2 were a number of men and women who said they ‘just wanted to
3 find out more about language’.
4 The Articulate Mammal was written for the members of that class,
5 and for others like them: people like me who would like to know
6 why we talk, how we acquire language, and what happens when we
7 produce or comprehend sentences. The book is also intended for
8 students at universities, polytechnics and colleges of education who
9 need an introduction to the subject. It cannot, of course, provide all
30111 the answers. But I have tried to set out clearly and briefly what seem
1 to me to have been the major topics of interest in psycholinguistics
2 in recent years, together with an assessment of the ‘state of play’ in
3 the field at the moment. I hope it will be useful.
4 I am extremely grateful to a number of scholars who made helpful
5 comments on the manuscript. In particular, and in alphabetical order,
6 Michael Banks of the London School of Economics, David Bennett
7 of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Paul Fletcher of Reading
8 University, Jerry Fodor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
9 Phil Johnson-Laird of the University of Sussex, Geoffrey Sampson of
40111 Lancaster University, and Deirdre Wilson of University College, London.
1 The book would probably have been better if I had taken more
21111 notice of their comments – but as the suggested improvements were
viii Preface to the first edition
1111 often contradictory, it was difficult to decide whose opinion to accept.
2 In cases of doubt, I preferred my own, so I am wholly responsible
3 for any errors or over-simplifications that the text may still contain.
4 My thanks also go to Irene Fekete, the evening-course student (and
5 Hutchinson’s executive) who persuaded me to write this book.
6 Let me add a brief note on style. In English, the so-called ‘unmarked’
7 or ‘neutral between sexes’ pronoun is he. Had I used this all the way
8 through The Articulate Mammal, it might have given the misleading
9 impression that only male mammals are articulate. I have therefore
1011 tried to use an equal number of he’s and she’s in passages where a
1 ‘neutral between sexes’ pronoun is required.
2 Jean Aitchison
3111 London, 1975
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Preface to the fifth edition
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3111 In the thirty plus years since this book was first published, psy-
4 cholinguistics has increased considerably, both in popularity and in the
5 amount written about it. It has expanded like a young cuckoo, and
6 is in danger of pushing some more traditional interests out of the nest.
7 Or, to take another metaphor, it has behaved like an active volcano,
8 belching out an increasing lava-flow of important findings which have
9 poured out over almost all areas of linguistics and psychology, and
20111 have – to some extent – changed the shape of the landscape.
1 Luckily, many of the questions asked remain the same, though
2 many more answers have been proposed. It is clearly impossible to
3 include all the new developments in this revised edition. I have, how-
4 ever, attempted to outline those which seem most relevant to the
5 issues discussed in this book. No chapter remains unaltered, and some
6 have undergone substantial additions and/or changes. For example,
7 human ‘mind-reading’, the ability to understand the intentions of
8 others, is turning out to be a key property underlying language
9 (Chapters 2–3). Huge steps forward have been taken in understanding
30111 the brain, largely due to the increased sophistication of modern brain
1 scans (Chapter 3). Chomsky’s ideas are still recognized as playing a
2 foundational role in modern psycholinguistics, but are these days being
3 pushed out of the limelight by the work of a younger generation of
4 scholars (Chapter 5). Verbs have continued to take centre stage in
5 children’s acquisition of language (Chapter 7) and in speech compre-
6 hension (Chapter 10). And so on, and so on. In addition, numerous
7 new references have been added. I hope this new edition will enable
8 readers to keep up with what is happening in the field at the moment.
9 As before, I am grateful for the skill and help of those at Routledge,
40111 especially (for this edition) Nadia Seemungal.
1 Jean Aitchison
21111 London, 2007