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About the Author:
Mark C. Baker is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He lives in Camden, New Jersey.
From Publishers Weekly:
Rutgers University linguist Baker delivers a milestone in the field of linguistics. In fact, the book goes far in establishing linguistics as a hard science. But before diving into linguistic jargon, Baker engagingly describes the success of the Navajo Code Talkers during WWII; their language proved the one cipher that eluded Japanese cryptographers. While most people would consider words the components of language a lexical rather than a grammatical issue Baker explores the "parametric theory" posited by, among others, Noam Chomsky, which cites grammatical structure or "parameters as the atoms of linguistic diversity." Many linguists find these parameters "recipes" for how words are put together to form meaning a satisfactory explanation for both the similarities and the differences between languages of completely different origins. English and Edo (West African), for example, are grammatically closer than English and French. Baker and others do not believe that word-order formulae stem from either cultural factors or "the survival dynamics of evolutionary biology." He doesn't, however, deny the cultural implications of language: numerous parameters prevented Napoleonic French, for example, from dominating Europe. Certain issues have weak explanations, such as the reasons that various Latinate languages developed divergent parameters. The concluding, somewhat indirect discussion of "hints of what parameters are related to" feels like a push for page count. Though Baker's comparison between linguistics and chemistry i.e., between the detection of grammatical "recipes" and chemists' long struggle to establish the periodic table may seem extreme to some, his clarification of complicated linguistics theories is more accessible than most. Sadly, few Americans care about word order (even in English), so this significant book may only get attention from specialists and libraries.
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- PublisherOxford Univ Press
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 019860632X
- ISBN 13 9780198606321
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number2
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The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar
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The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar
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Book Description Condition: very good. New York :Basic Books, 2002. Hardcover. Dustjacket. 288 pp. - 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. Condition : very good copy. ISBN 9780198606321. Keywords : LiNGUISTICS, Seller Inventory # 279254
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The atoms of language : the mind's hidden rules of grammar.
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Book Description Condition: as new. Oxford & New York : Oxford University Press , 2002. Hardbound. 276 pp. Includes bibliographical references and index. Condition : as new copy. ISBN 9780198606321. Keywords : LINGUISTICS, Seller Inventory # 188545
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. HARDBACK IN JACKET 2002. Clean & tight. No inscriptions. Jacket is not torn. Jacket is now under clear removable covers. Dispatched ROYAL MAIL FIRST CLASS with TRACKING next working day or sooner securely boxed in cardboard. ref h55. The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar. Seller Inventory # 043351
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