The Language Game

<p>'Marvellously clear... playfully persuasive' <b>Richard Dawkins</b><br>'Full of Fascinating details. A delight to read.' <b>Tim Harford</b><br>'Highly original and convincing ... a delight to read!' - <b>Daniel Everett</b><br><br>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br><b>What is language?</b><br><b>Why do we have it?</b><br><b>Why does that matter?</b><br><br>Language is perhaps humanity's most astonishing accomplishment and one that remains poorly understood.<br><br>Upending centuries of scholarship (including most recently Chomsky and Pinker) <i>The Language Game </i>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.<br><br>Drawing on entertaining and persuasive examples from across the world the book explains:<br><br>&#183; How our short-lived memory copes with the on-rushing deluge of sound that is everyday speech.<br>&#183; Why it is that language is such a challenge for language scientists but learnt effortlessly by toddlers.<br>&#183; Why the languages of the world are so spectacularly varied---and why no two people speak quite the same language.<br>&#183; Why humans have language but chimps don't.<br>&#183; How language gave us a big brain and changed the course of evolution.<br>&#183; How language doesn't limit but does shape how we think.<br>&#183;And ultimately why all we know about language should give us hope.<br><br><b>Christiansen and Chater's <i>The Language Game</i> draws on a fascinating range of examples to show the way language works has shaped our evolution and is critical to our future.</b></p>