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Language Unlimited: The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power PDF

2019·0.6612 MB·other
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Description:

<p>All humans, but no other species, have the capacity to create and understand language. It provides structure to our thoughts, allowing us to plan, communicate, and create new ideas, without limit. Yet we have only finite experiences, and our languages have finite stores of words. Where does our linguistic creativity come from? How does the endless scope of language emerge from our limited selves? </p>
<p>Drawing on research from neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics, David Adger takes the reader on a journey to the hidden structure behind all we say (or sign) and understand. Along the way you'll meet children who created language out of almost nothing, and find out how new languages emerge using structures found in languages spoken continents away. David Adger will show you how the more than 7000 languages in the world appear to obey the same deep scientific laws, how to invent a language<br>that breaks these, and how our brains go crazy when we try to learn languages that just aren't possible. You'll discover why rats are better than we are at picking up certain language patterns, why apes are far worse at others, and how artificial intelligences, such as those behind Alexa and Siri,<br>understand language in a very un-human way. </p>
<p>Language Unlimited explores the many mysteries about our capacity for language and reveals the source of its endless creativity. **</p>
Review
<p>"[Adger's] tour of Chomskyan linguistics is entertaining and accessible - in contrast to Chomsky's own notoriously baffling prose. The book is a handy introduction to a vexed debate on the infinite power of the finite mortal mind." -- The Economist</p>
<p>"[I]n my opinion the best attempt ever made to explain the linguistic framework within which Adger works - that of Noam Chomsky. The book is very readable without ever being childish, light in tone without being annoyingly funny, and clear about the author's point of view without being polemical." -- Marc Van Oostendorp, Neerlandistiek</p>
<p>"I wish there were more linguistics professors bringing their A-game to a larger audience like this." -- Superlinguo</p>
<p>"A delightful journey through the many fascinating aspects of language, its nature and use, its richness and variety and its deep commonalities, beginning with the simplest observations and reaching to the borders of inquiry, interleaved with striking illustrations from a wide variety of languages and illuminating the way with results from experimental, animal, and computational research. A wonderful experience." -- Noam Chomsky</p></br></br>
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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.