The Ascent of Babel: An Exploration of Language, Mind, and Understanding
Altmann has written a cross between a textbook for beginning psycholinguistic students and a popular science book for laypersons. The audiences for both are similar, but trying to address both leads to an occasionally inconsistent book. Though, as Altmann says in the introduction (quoting Doris Lessing), one should skip however much is necessary to keep the book interesting. Not much needs skipping. Altmann explains in lay terms what psycholinguistics is and how its findings affect what we know of human experience. He also makes clear why experiments are designed the way they are and the inferences drawn from the results. For anyone who has ever pondered why babies speak only their native language, how dyslexics misperceive language, what language learning tells us about human behavior in general, what Noam Chomsky did before becoming a guru, or (especially interesting to readers) the relation of writing to speech, this book explains all in a clear, simple, if sometimes dry manner. Like most good science books, this tells how we know, not what we know.Kevin Grandfield--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.