The Ascent of Babel
explores the ways in which the mind produces, and understands,
language - it explores the ways in which the sounds of a language
evoke meaning, and the ways in which the desire to convey such
meaning causes us to produce such sounds. The
Ascent symbolises the progression from sound to meaning.
It also symbolises the quest to better understand the mental
processes that underlie our use of language - the psycholinguistic
quest. The Ascent of Babel describes these mental
processes in a way that bridges the gap between academic and
non-specialist writing. It makes psycholinguistics accessible to
readers with no prior knowledge of psycholinguistics, psychology,
or linguistics, whilst at the same time being of use to students
who require an up-to-date introduction to the state-of-the-art.
The Ascent of Babel has been translated into
Spanish (published by Editorial Ariel) and Italian (Feltrinelli
Editore), and is currently being translated into German
(Klett-Cotta), Czech, and Korean.
I have a more detailed outline and a reviews page.