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; and 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.