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Bezig met laden... The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention (2005)door Guy Deutscher
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Outstanding analysis of the destructive and creative forces changing language! Fascinating on how the need for emphasis and metaphor constantly lead to new expressions, while the trends towards abbreviation and loss of distinctiveness constantly erode them back down into common, unremarkable use, requiring newer expressions all over again. This will give you new eyes to see how everything we say about our changing language is part of the endless ebb and flow of linguistic evolution. Intriguing exploration of how languages evolve, explaining how a super-simple primitive proto-language of basically just nouns and verbs could turn into the dizzyingly complex structures that all current languages have. As a side-benefit, he explains why people constantly (and for centuries) complain that language is being corrupted and weakened. Lots of humor and interesting literary and historical references. Explanations are careful and pretty simple, but sometimes the reasoning is very long and involves long series of steps — a little hard for my addled brain to follow. So I skimmed over some bits. But I was left full of wonder about language and the linguists who study it. Note: he does-not- attempt to explain how language first started: those first utterances of isolated words. He says there is no evidence to support any real theory about it. But based on what we know about how language has changed in the last 6000 years or so, he does have solid theories about how language could grow and become more complex. But if you’re hoping to learn how people first learned to speak at all, this is not the book. And he is saying, sadly, that there may never be a convincing explanation of how language first began. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
"Language is mankind's greatest invention--except, of course, that it was never invented." So begins linguist Deutscher's investigation into the genesis and evolution of language. If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of "man throw spear," how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced degrees of meaning? Drawing on recent discoveries in linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving us fresh insight into how language emerges, evolves, and decays. He traces the evolution of linguistic complexity from an early "Me Tarzan" stage to such elaborate single-word constructions as the Turkish sehirlilestiremediklerimizdensiniz ("you are one of those whom we couldn't turn into a town dweller"). He shows how the processes of destruction and creation are continuously in operation, generating new words, new structures, and new meanings.--From publisher description. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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It was a while since an educational book gripped me this much. Of course I am interested in this area but the way it was written just made me that much more interested to learn more. Easy to grasp, funny, diverse in writing. A book I can recommend to anyone that ever pondered how languages came to be what they are today. ( )