The Language Game: How improvisation created language and changed the world

Chater, Nick,Christiansen, Morten H.

ISBN 10: 1787633489 / ISBN 13: 9781787633483

Published by Bantam Press, 2022

About this Item

Our good condition books are generally good for reading but not for gifting or collecting. They could have imperfections such as creasing, fanning, inscriptions, margin notes, yellowing, staining on edge or cover or pages, bumps, scuffs, etc etc (sometimes multiple of these). It's a wide category that encompasses anything that isn't almost-new down to anything that is slightly better than poor. We would NOT recommend gifting Good books - these should be considered reading copies. Our books are dispatched from a Yorkshire former cotton mill. We list via barcode/ISBN so please note that the images are stock images and may not be the exact copy you receive, furthermore the details about edition and year might not be accurate as many publishers reuse the same ISBN for multiple editions and as we simply scan a barcode or enter an ISBN we do not check the validity of the edition data when listing. If you're looking for an exact edition please don't order (at least not without checking with us first, although we don't always have time to check). We aim to dispatch prompty, the service used will depend on order value and book size. We can ship to most countries, see our shipping policies. Payment is via Abe only.

Seller Inventory # mon0000068400

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Language Game: How improvisation created language and changed the world
• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1787633489
• ISBN 13: 9781787633483
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

'Marvellously clear... playfully persuasive' Richard Dawkins 'Full of Fascinating details. A delight to read.' Tim Harford'Highly original and convincing ... a delight to read!' - Daniel Everett-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What is language? Why do we have it? Why does that matter?Language is perhaps humanity's most astonishing accomplishment and one that remains poorly understood.Upending centuries of scholarship (including, most recently, Chomsky and Pinker) The Language Game shows how people learn to talk not by acquiring fixed meanings and rules, but by picking up, reusing, and recombining countless linguistic fragments in novel ways. Drawing on entertaining and persuasive examples from across the world the book · How our short-lived memory copes with the on-rushing deluge of sound that is everyday speech.· Why it is that language is such a challenge for language scientists but learnt effortlessly by toddlers.· Why the languages of the world are so spectacularly varied---and why no two people speak quite the same language.· Why humans have language, but chimps don't.· How language gave us a big brain and changed the course of evolution.· How language doesn't limit, but does shape, how we think.·And ultimately, why all we know about language should give us hope.Christiansen and Chater's The Language Game draws on a fascinating range of examples to show the way language works, has shaped our evolution and is critical to our future.