| The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar Revised Edition Contributor(s): Baker, Mark C. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0465005225 ISBN-13: 9780465005222 Publisher: Basic Books OUR PRICE: $17.09 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 2002 Annotation: Whether all human languages are fundamentally the same or different has been a subject of debate for ages. This problem has deep philosophical implications: If languages are all the same, it implies a fundamental commonality -- and thus mutual intelligibility -- of human thought. We are now on the verge of solving this problem. Using a twenty-year-old theory proposed by the world's greatest living linguist, Noam Chomsky, researchers have found that the similarities among languages are more profound than the differences. Languages whose grammars seem completely incompatible may in fact be structurally almost identical, except for a difference in one simple rule. The discovery of these rules and how they may vary promises to yield a linguistic equivalent of the Periodic Table of the Elements: a single framework by which we can understand the fundamental structure of all human language. This is a landmark breakthrough both within linguistics, which will herewith finally become a full-fledged science, and in our understanding of the human mind. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Language Arts & Disciplines | Linguistics - General |
| Dewey: 400 |
| LCCN: 2001035936 |
| Lexile Measure: 1240 |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.01" W x 8.09" (0.71 lbs) 288 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Whether all human languages are fundamentally the same or different has been a subject of debate for ages. This problem has deep philosophical implications: If languages are all the same, it implies a fundamental commonality-and thus the mutual intelligibility-of human thought. We are now on the verge of answering this question. Using a twenty-year-old theory proposed by the world's greatest living linguist, Noam Chomsky, researchers have found that the similarities among languages are more profound than the differences. Languages whose grammars seem completely incompatible may in fact be structurally almost identical, except for a difference in one simple rule. The discovery of these rules and how they may vary promises to yield a linguistic equivalent of the Periodic Table of the Elements: a single framework by which we can understand the fundamental structure of all human language. This is a landmark breakthrough, both within linguistics, which will thereby become a full-fledged science for the first time, and in our understanding of the human mind. |