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The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention
Ebook Download The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention
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Review
“A lively and thought-provoking exploration of why language change appears to be haphazard yet is fundamentally orderly. Exciting, witty, and a masterpiece of contemporary scholarship.†―Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and English, Stanford University“At last, an entertaining and readable book that presents the most current views on language and its evolution.†―Joan Bybee, Professor of Linguistics, University of New Mexico“Thoroughly enjoyable... Guy Deutscher is an erudite and entertaining guide through the paradoxes and complexities of language evolution.†―Gene Gragg, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University of Chicago
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About the Author
Born in Israel in 1969, Guy Deutscher studied mathematics and earned a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Cambridge, where he became a research fellow in 1998. A widely acclaimed scholar of ancient Semitic languages, Deutscher is at the University of Leiden in Holland.
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Product details
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; Reprint edition (May 1, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805080120
ISBN-13: 978-0805080124
Product Dimensions:
6.3 x 1 x 9.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.5 out of 5 stars
112 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#178,014 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is a very intelligent book, written with deep knowledge and humor. One is bound to learn quite a bit from the contents of the book. Among other things it aims at explaining the relationships that exist between language and mental evolution, social evolution and cultural evolution, which is what humans are about. But for the grace of me, I cannot understand how Amazon can release Kindle versions of books where some portions of the text are POSITIVELY UNREADABLE. The font is microscopic, causing the reader to have to skip some of the text. In my view this is quite inexcusable, as the technology is there to avoid the problem. This reflects at best a sense of carelessness from the people in charge of formatting the Kindle text, at worst a complete contempt toward the customer. A book SHOULD NOT BE KINDLE-RELEASED if it is not 100% readable. A lot still has to be done to make Kindle books at par with printed material. (Note: I have Kindle Paper White, one of the latest devices available.)
Guy Deutscher will be your new favourite linguist. His sincerity and wide-ranging admiration for linguistic achievement win one over. As a bonus, Deutscher is truly funny, no smart-ass élitist like Steven Pinker or John McWhorter. An eccentric feature of Unfolding is its incorporating fictional dialogues among two non-professional linguists and a linguistics professor. Not the character in the dialogue Deutscher hovers nearest to but only by his sufferance present in the dialogue at all is a representative of the (also fictional) “Royal Society for the Protection of English.†Elsewhere, in a similar vein, Deutcher recalls the great 19C romantic-linguist August Schleicher with qualified approval. Compare such allowances to the up-front hostility of Bas Aart’s Modern Grammar: “Readers hoping to find confirmation [here] that the so-called split infinitive is odious…will be disappointed†(Preface). Deutscher’s relative openmindedness in these regards bodes well for our opinion of the book as a whole.The thesis of Unfolding is that changes in language are the work of opposing cyclical forces. The Gothic word for “guest†was “gast,†and the plural of “gast†was “gastiz.†The “a†and “i†of “gastiz†requiring different mouth positions in quick succession, “gastiz†underwent what is known as a-mutation: the colouring of an “a†by a subsequent “i†that makes the “a†easier to pronounce (120). After a-mutation, which made {a} into {eh}, the singular-plural pair became gast/gestiz. Emphasis being on the first syllable of “gestiz†and the pair already being distinguishable from each other by this vowel-shift, the terminal “z†wore off leaving only “i,†which was soon even further eroded to “ə†(schwa). The mid-word a/e feature caught on as a paradigm—as students of modern German know, or wish they knew, all too well. Thus did one “blind change†(194), which destroyed part of German word structure, prompt analogical extension and lead, ultimately, to the shining new edifice of nominal German umlaut.Deutscher’s is a brilliant model of language change, but I have a few questions for him. One involves the fact that some blind changes seem to have lead to permanent destruction. According to Benjamin Forston III, a barrage of syncope and apocope “[devastated]†Old Irish verbs and especially verbs compounded with one or more preverbs (323); as a result, the absolute and conjunct forms even of relatively simple verbs can look entirely and preposterously unalike (324). What but confusion did such erosion bring for the Insular Celts and the students of the Celtic language thereafter? Shouldn’t they have fought (negative) change off insofar as they could? And regarding the possibility of fighting off change, isn’t Sanskrit, whose very name means “[carefully] assembled,†an instance of a language consciously defying erosion? And isn’t conservative Senatorial Latin another instance? Deutcher needs standards of positive and negative change.
A fascinating and well-written book.Deutscher describes how languages change over time, and he offers some explanations for the changes. And he does this with some flair; it's more Bill Bryson than textbook.He shows how the slang of today becomes the formal, proper language of tomorrow. This process has been occurring for millennia. It's interesting to hear the criticisms of ancient Roman commentators about the careless language of the day.He also gives some insight into how certain languages work. I'd always wondered about the various salaams, shaloms, and the like in Semitic languages. Why are they so similar, but not exactly the same? And what about Latin case structure - what is that all about? Deutscher explains some of these potentially tedious topics in an interesting and informative manner.After reading this book, you'll never hear language quite the same way again.Essential reading for grammar Nazis!
After reading Tom Wolfe's last book, which lambasted Noam Chomsky's chokehold on the nature and evolution of language, I went back to this book which makes an impressive, relatively non-controversial case on how language and its components evolved. He is very, very careful not to engage in the intellectual and academic politics that Wolfe reveled in. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the origins of human consciousness and culture. It's a pretty easy read for an interested layman.
A phenomenal book on the evolution of human language written with incredible wit and humor, as well as great erudition and intelligence. Highly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning how and why language changes over the ages. As a speaker of both English and a Semitic language I found this book especially interesting as these are two language family groups that the author goes into a great deal of detail about. I would, however, have appreciated more references to the tonal languages of Asia as I know nothing of their grammar and wonder if this language family undergoes the same processes the Semitic and Indo-European languages do.
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