Afbeelding auteur
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Over de Auteur

Mark G. Baker is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University.

Bevat de naam: Марк Бейкер

Werken van Mark C. Baker

Gerelateerde werken

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis (2009) — Medewerker — 22 exemplaren
The Routledge Companion to Theism (2012) — Medewerker — 13 exemplaren
The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax (Bloomsbury Companions) (2013) — Medewerker — 3 exemplaren
Lexical knowledge in the organization of language (1995) — Medewerker — 1 exemplaar

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Algemene kennis

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Really liked it, although my eyes (brain?) glazed over for a couple chapters of really intense grammar discussions. But that felt like my fault, not the book's. it was well-written and clear and there was a subtle sense of humor and humility that I really appreciated.
 
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steve02476 | 5 andere besprekingen | Jan 3, 2023 |
really interesting analogy between language and chemistry (atoms).
 
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cziering | 5 andere besprekingen | Nov 27, 2022 |
This is a collection of philosophical essays that deal with the idea of anti-materialism, that dualism is a proper way for philosophers to look at the world, that indeed there is a soul, and this explains things better. I got onto this book because one of the editors, Mark Baker, wrote an excellent book, the Atoms of Lanugage, which descibes the grammatical diversity of the world's languages. The essays in many cases are technical and deep, and the book is not easy going. The authors mostly reject the strict dualism of Descartes, but feel we need to get beyond the idea of materialism as the null hypothesis. Some homage is paid to Noam Chomsky, which I am not sure is necessary.… (meer)
 
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vpfluke | Feb 4, 2012 |
This book is amazing! It's one of those scientific books written for a general audience that finds just the right balance of good writing and rigorous science.

The only other book I could compare it to (not in terms of content but in terms of quality writing and cumulative effect) is Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene. Like that book, this one finds stories and metaphors that make it really easy to understand otherwise difficult concepts. Yet like that one, this book doesn't take the metaphors too far, it knows when to say "this is where the metaphor doesn't apply". Also, it isn't afraid to challenge the reader with some pretty hard concepts and technical terms. I will admit that I didn't understand everything, but I was able to follow along 95% of the time. He doesn't present only ideas with solid acceptance from the scientific community; instead, he sometimes goes into areas that are still highly controversial, but he always tells you where he stands (and why) as well as where the opposing viewpoints stand (and why). In other words, he treats the reader like his scientific peer.

I constantly had moments of revelation while reading this, where I just felt like AHA it all fits together, it all makes sense! Unlike The Selfish Gene, this book is about linguistics! Which is an area that I haven't given enough thought to, but will be soon.

The basic thrust of the book is this: it asks the reader to forget about the fact that certain languages are related to other languages (the Germanic languages, for instance) and instead asks: is there a meaningful way of comparing languages that are seemingly NOTHING alike and come from completely different lineages? For example: is there a way of comparing English to Navajo, or to Japanese? On the surface, it seems like these languages cannot be more different. The complexities of each language, once you get into the nitty gritty of learning them, seem insurmountable. Not that it is impossible to learn them, but you have to learn a whole new way of thinking. It is not a simple process of mapping over a set of vocabulary words.

But this book shows us where these seemingly complex differences come from. It uses a chemical analogy throughout... and also to make it even simpler, a cooking analogy (since cooking is a form of chemistry). The experience of crackers and the experience of bread is completely different. However, when making both, the only difference is ONE ingredient: yeast. Similarly, if you look into languages, there are some key ingredients that can potentially make languages differ widely. If you look at an example sentence in English and an example sentence in Japanese, the surface differences seem as incompatible as bread and crackers. But if you analyze the sentences for the hidden components that structure them, it turns out there is only one ingredient (he calls them parameters) that separates English from Japanese.

He outlines a set of parameters that they have discovered already that act as underlying rules of all language. It seems that when a new language comes into being, at some point it 'chooses' whether to set one parameter or not (like choosing whether to add yeast or not). It gets more complicated when more than one parameter acts/interacts on a language, so that its effects aren't as easily isolated (but can still be deduced if you're a smarty pants linguist). What is curious is that with the dozen or so parameters they've discovered, it would seem like each combination would produce an equal amount of languages. Instead, 90 something percent of all languages follow one of two paths… and within those paths, some of the other decisions are much more common than others. Why would this be the case?

Going back to the chemistry analogy, he explains that just like certain combinations produce more stable compounds, others create unstable ones that are not likely to stick around or are radioactive. This seems to be true for language too. Which creates an interesting question as to why our brains are adapted to certain patterns for language forming and not others? And also, why is there variation at all? If we are born with a language instinct, why don't we all develop the same universal rules for language instead of a set of parameters that can be set in slightly different combinations in each language? Is there value to having many different languages if all languages are capable of expressing all thoughts (a point that he makes early on). The book ends on a bunch of philosophical questions like this that are very interesting.

Chapter 5 (Alloys and Compounds) was the most difficult and challenging chapter. When you get to this point, don't be discouraged. Read it slowly. I understood the general idea of it, but the specific examples sometimes gave me a hard time. But I didn't worry too much about not understanding it fully, as long as the big idea made sense.

Also: there is a glossary of linguistic terms in the back.. I didn't know this until I got to the very end, this could have been useful if I knew about it.

Some weird factoids I learned:

The structure of English is more closely related to Indonesian than to any of the European languages that you'd think it would be closer to, like French, Spanish, German, etc.

Do Eskimos really have a lot of words for snow? No this is a myth.

Children cannot learn a language by just watching television.

In the sentence "It is raining" what does the word "it" refer to? I've never thought of this. (In Spanish, you can just say "Raining." and that would be a grammatically correct complete sentence)

Why does the phrase 'big white house' sound okay but 'white big house' sound a little wrong? This question does not come up in this book, but I thought I'd write it in this review anyway so I won't forget to think about it more later.
… (meer)
 
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JimmyChanga | 5 andere besprekingen | Feb 1, 2011 |

Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk

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Werken
6
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4
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469
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#52,471
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½ 3.7
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7
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22
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