As I noted in the preface of the first edition, although language is not the only thing that makes us human, it is hard to imagine people without it. Given the importance of language for our behavior, it may be surprising that until recently, it received relatively little attention in undergraduate courses.

Often, at best, it was studied as part of a general cognitive psychology course. This situation has changed. Moreover, the research field of psycholinguistics is experiencing a period of flourishing, as evidenced by the increase in the number of papers on the subject and, indeed, by the number of journals dedicated to this topic.

With this increase and level of interest, it may be surprising that there are still relatively few handbooks dedicated to psycholinguistics. I hope this book will fill that gap. It is aimed at undergraduate students at an intermediate and advanced level, although newer graduates may also find it useful, and I would be extremely pleased if it found other readers as well.

I have tried to direct the references towards accessible material as much as possible. Therefore, I avoided citing excerpts from unpublished papers, doctoral theses, and conference papers. New work is constantly being published, and if I were to make this book completely up-to-date, I would never stop. So, I decided to limit, with a few exceptions, the material to what was published by 2000.

Of course, given the current delays in publications, much of this material will have been written some years ago, and the present state of ideas and work, as discussed in conferences and seminars, is likely to be very different from the positions developed in this book. This is very unfortunate, but unavoidable.