Gerry T. M. Altmann

My previous review on Amazon:

A good book, but could use some tweaking.

This book covers many topics of psycholinguistics in a way that someone with no background (except personal experience) can understand. Ch. 10 ("Exercising the vocal organs") is especially good in this respect because it covers the kinds of slips-of-the-tongue all of us can relate to, and then discusses the theoretical implications of the kinds of slips that are made. So this book will do fine if you want to learn a little bit about learning different sounds, finding meanings for words, and guessing meanings from grammar. Also, there is a chapter that quickly overviews different kinds of aphasias, dyslexias, and dysgraphias (problems with spoken language, problems with understanding written language, and problems with writing) as well as a nice not-over-technical chapter on computer modeling of how the brain might learn grammar. I feel so enriched! (8

The flow of the text is awkward: the transitions between chapters were okay, but within some chapters Altmann seems to ramble on somewhat. The book is quite readable if you don't do it all at one sitting, in which case this sort of thing might get annoying, but rather a chapter or two at a time, which fits well with the author's page vi suggestion that "the reader of this book should also skip [passages of the book] as necessary." This is not any less so for the fact that Altmann includes a preface, a pre-chapter called "In the beginning," and a chapter-one introduction to psycholinguistics. Altmann is also plagued the unfortunate "ascent of Babel" metaphor and feels obliged to waxing poetic on it between chapters.

It seems to me that Altmann glosses over controversy, for example as to the origins of the human race and human languages. I was a little surprised that there was no elaboration on what others tell me is not an open-shut case. I get the feeling that Altmann has a limited background on the topic, giving only 7 references in the bibliography for this chapter. Other chapters with sparse bibliography showings note that Altmann couldn't find further general reading, etc., and on average chapters 2 through 13 still have twice that many references, even though they cover much less academic terrain.… (mehr)