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The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary…
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The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention (2005 original; edició 2006)

de Guy Deutscher (Autor)

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1,1723216,766 (4.15)58
"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.… (més)
Membre:Geekstress
Títol:The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention
Autors:Guy Deutscher (Autor)
Informació:Holt Paperbacks (2006), Edition: Reprint, 368 pages
Col·leccions:La teva biblioteca, Llegint actualment, Per llegir
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Informació de l'obra

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention de Guy Deutscher (2005)

  1. 20
    The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language de John McWhorter (keristars)
    keristars: Great companion books - two perspectives of virtually the same thing. McWhorter's looks more at the sheer variety (or lack thereof) of languages, while Deutscher's looks at the complexity within a single language.
  2. 00
    The Seeds of Speech de Jean Aitchison (SomeGuyInVirginia)
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» Mira també 58 mencions

Anglès (29)  Alemany (2)  Italià (1)  Totes les llengües (32)
Es mostren 1-5 de 32 (següent | mostra-les totes)
I am not sure you'd be capable of digesting all of chapters, but even those few you'd manage will constitute for an inspirational and thought-provoking read. You'll never regret spending your time on it, because it will greatly enhance your understanding of language and its structure.
  Den85 | Jan 3, 2024 |
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. ( )
  fji65hj7 | May 14, 2023 |
loved it. great explanations of how languages constantly and simultaneously evolve and devolve. fun and illuminating examples. would have really helped to have some of this when learning Arabic. ( )
  zizabeph | May 7, 2023 |
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. ( )
1 vota steve02476 | Jan 3, 2023 |
Very interesting. Author has engaging style and a sense of humor. He does go on a bit in certain parts, so just feel free to skim ahead. Dead horse and all that. Still worth reading. ( )
  PattyLee | Dec 14, 2021 |
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Nom de l'autorCàrrecTipus d'autorObra?Estat
Guy Deutscherautor primaritotes les edicionscalculat
Fyfe, LisaDissenyador de la cobertaautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Pfeiffer, MartinTraductorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
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For Janie

maṣṣar šulmim u balāṭim ina rēšiki ay ipparku
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Introduction
This Marvellous Invention'
Of all mankind's manifold creations, language must take pride of place. Other inventions – the wheel, agriculture, sliced bread – may have transformed our matreial existence, but the advent of language is what made us human. Compared to language, all other inventions pale in significance, since everything we have ever achieved depends on language and originates from it. Without language, we could never have embarked on our ascent to unparalleled power over all other animals, and even over nature itself.
I
A Castle in the AirC'est un langage estrange que le Basque
On dit qu'ils s'entendent, je n'en croy rien.

Basque is really a strange language . . .
It is said they understand one another,
but I don't believe any of it.

         Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609)

Everyone knows that the words of a language, from its aardvarks to its zucchini, lend meaning to our utterances, and allow us to understand one another. And it is because foreign languages use so many strange words that we cannot understand them without years of labour. Even Joseph Scaliger, the most erudite scholar of his day, a polyglot not only fluent in Latin, Greek and most of the modern languages of Europe, but also self-taught in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Persian, still had to give up on Basque, because it used completely different words for absolutely everything. The effort of memorizing many thousands of words so overwhelms our perception of what language learning is all about that it may easily lead to the impressions that knowing a language just comes down to knowing its words. Surely, if one could only recognize the meaning of each word, all one would need to do is add all these meanings up somehow, in order to grasp the sense of a whole sentence. But if this is so, and language ultimately amounts to just words, then isn't the quest for the origin of structure merely an intellectual wild goose chase?
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"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.

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