Product Description

'Language is mankind's greatest invention - except of course, that it was never invented.' So begins Guy Deutscher's enthralling investigation into the evolution of language. No one believes that the Roman Senate sat down one day to design the complex system that is Latin grammar, and few believe, these days, in the literal truth of the story of the Tower of Babel. But then how did there come to be so many languages, and of such elaborate design? 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 shades of meaning? Drawing on recent, groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication. Along the way, we learn why German maidens are neuter while German turnips are female, why we have feet not foots, and how great changes of pronunciation may result from simple laziness...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24430 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
"* "A highly original study of the evolution of language... A brilliant solution to a quandary that has puzzled people for many centuries... If [the] decay and simplification [of language] are constant and universal...how did...regular and complex languages come to exist in the first place? Deutscher's chosen task is to unravel that paradox, and he does so brilliantly, withholding the secret with great skill. If I told you how it works, you wouldn't buy the book. Suffice to say his explanation is both clever and convincing... this book will stretch your mind' Independent on Sunday * "He really ought to be read...by anyone who persists in complaining that the English language is going to the dogs...interesting and substantial" - Nicholas Bagnal, Sunday Telegraph * 'Powerful and thrilling.' Spectator"

From the Publisher
'Enthralling' A.S. Byatt

A brilliant and original exploration of how languages evolve and have evolved, comparable to Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct in its accessibility, wit and ambition.

From the Inside Flap
How do languages evolve? Why does language always change – and does it decline or does it progress? What accounts for its extraordinary complexity? In The Unfolding of Language, Guy Deutscher responds to the big questions with big answers, along the way solving such mysteries as

* Why German maidens are neuter while German turnips are female
* How Islam, Muslim, and Solomon are all variations on the same Semitic root, s-l-m ("be at peace")
* How the design of Sumerian (the language spoken 5,000 years ago by the people who kick-started history) is so sophisticated that even a gap in the middle of a word can convey specific information
* Why we have feet and not foots
* Why the Turks seem to be talking ‘back to front’
* How the French came to say "on the day of on the day of this day" when they mean "today"
* Why most of the world’s languages don’t have a verb for "have" – and how one goes about expressing the notion of possession without it
* How words manage to accomplish a complete U-turn in their meaning over a relatively short time – like the word "resent," which, in the seventeenth century, meant "appreciate" or "feel grateful for"
* Why human intuition – as evidenced by all human languages – discovered the connection between space and time thousands of years before Einstein

Customer Reviews

Analysing the uninvented invention
The author calls language an "uninvented invention". This highly engaging, witty book is an attempt to uncover at least some of the secrets of language and to dismantle the stated paradox. He explains the meaning of `structure', argues that the present is the key to the past & explains why languages do not remain static. By drawing on recent discoveries in linguistics, he explores the forces of destruction, creation and the innate structure of language. It is revealed that the source of grammatical elements like case markers, pre- & post-positions and tense markers is the mundane words like inter alia `hand' and `go'.

Chapter One: Castles In The Air, takes a close look at the structure of language, whilst the following chapter: Perpetual Motion, demonstrates linguistic development and change with particular reference to English, German, French and the Indo-European language family as a whole. Chapter Three: Forces Of Destruction, is a further investigation of how and why changes in sound and meaning take place, with many examples from Indo-European.

Chapter Four examines interesting verbs like "to have/to hold" and the concepts of space & time in linguistic expression. All languages use spatial terms to describe temporal relations, revealing that space-time is deeply entrenched in human cognition. A metaphor is a way of describing something by comparing it to something else, and is an indispensable element in thought-processing. The stream of metaphors flowing through language moves from the concrete to the abstract. Language consists of layer upon layer of metaphors that are as common in plain conversation as in sublime poetics.

Chapter Five: Forces Of Creation, is a discussion of how new words and structures arise, how meanings change and the multiple ways in which languages are enriched by these developments. It was interesting to learn, for example that the conjunction `but' derives from Old English `be-utan' ("by the outside").

Chapter Six looks at the need for order in languages and contains lots of interesting information on the intricate Semitic verbal system. In essence, the effects of erosion interact with the mind's craving for order. There is thus a constant search for regular patterns and spontaneous analogical innovations arise. This is based on erosion + expressiveness and erosion + analogy.

The final chapter brings it all together and includes detailed discussions of the common sources out of which possessives, quantifiers, plural markers & articles may develop, the various interactions of verbs & nouns, and the nuances of action like tenses (past, present, future, continues & completed), and modality (should, ought, etc.). Adverbs and subordinate clauses are also discussed.

In the Epilogue, Deutscher revisits the mind's desire for order and the fact that innovation is based on a principle of recycling. He also discusses the movement towards simplification in the word structure of the Indo-European languages over thousands of years in terms of cyclical & linear time. Proto Indo-European had eight cases for nouns in the singular, dual & plural while the modern daughter languages have few left and there is a marked decline in the fusion of words.

This highly entertaining read is accessible to the non-linguist and explains many fascinating features of language and its structure. There are five appendices, copious notes, a bibliography and glossary of terms. The book concludes with an index. The text is enhanced by figures, illustrations and photographs, including an aerial view of the ruins of & an artist's impression of Hattusa in its heyday plus portraits of the Brothers Grimm and Sir William Jones who discovered the relationship of Sanskrit to Greek & Latin.

Appendix A provides more info on the flipping of word categories with reference to the word `go' which functions both as a verb and an auxiliary marking the future tense. Appendix B revisits the role of laryngeal consonants in the Semitic languages that changed the vowels I and U in their vicinity into A and the consequences of the phenomenon.

The next appendix elaborates on the complicated Semitic verbal templates with reference to how reflexives, intensives, causatives, passives & passive reflexive forms originated. Appendix D looks at how the ambiguity of pronouns as to referent may be solved; for example, by harnessing the emphatic `self' to function as a reflexive.

The final appendix, The Turkish Mirror, deals with the convergence of all languages into two opposing word-order camps. Joseph Greenberg made this discovery in the 1960s. The word-order arrangement results from the positioning of one particular couple, the verb and the object. The early choice between VO or OV determines whether pre- or postpositions will be employed and ripples throughout the entire structure of a language to determine, amongst others, the possessive construction where the two nouns arrange themselves to correspond with pre- or post-positions.

I also recommend On the Origin of Languages & A Guide to the World's Languages by Merritt Ruhlen, A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler and the work of that great pioneer of language classification, Professor Joseph Greenberg, especially Language Universals & Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family.

The secret life of languages
If nobody actually invented it, how could the bewildering variety, rich complexity and sheer expressiveness of human language 'mankind's greatest invention' have ever come about? Guy Deutscher takes us through an entertaining and plausible history of language's origins, explaining how the intricacy of for example Latin and Old English grammar could have emerged through a natural process of expressiveness and metaphor (creatively adding new words to phrases), analogy (ordering random variance into meaningful rules) and erosion (lazy speaking, losing endings and shortening words). He even explains how the weird and wonderful Semitic verb structure (where Hebrew and Arabic are forever united in parallel linguistic complexity) could have arisen. The first three quarters of the book reads like a novel, charting the exciting history of linguistics as well as language theory itself, only slowing in the final section where the author attempts to explain the strange source of subordinate clauses, a difficult area even for dedicated linguists to decipher. The ending, too, seems unexpectedly abrupt. If language is a flux of creation and destruction, why has there been a marked tendency in modern languages towards grammatical simplification with the case endings of Latin and Old English `rubbed off' in their modern counterparts? Is literacy the culprit? There are some quite interesting theories around but unfortunately they are skipped over here, leaving the reader with many questions unanswered. Nonetheless, this is still a cracking page-turning introduction to a fascinating area and not to be missed if you have any interest in the mysteries of language.

Accessible exploration of why we speak as we do
Very readable account of how language developed, the author has an engaging style and a good way with metaphors which helps the casual reader get a handle on the more complex linguistic stuff. Some slow chapters and it seemed to end rather abruptly, but cleared up a lot of "why do we..?" type questions nicely.