<p>'Marvellously clear... playfully persuasive' Richard Dawkins<br>'Full of Fascinating details. A delight to read.' Tim Harford<br>'Highly original and convincing ... a delight to read!' - Daniel Everett<br><br>What is language?<br>Why do we have it?<br>Why does that matter?<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>· How our short-lived memory copes with the on-rushing deluge of sound that is everyday speech.<br>· Why it is that language is such a challenge for language scientists but learnt effortlessly by toddlers.<br>· Why the languages of the world are so spectacularly varied---and why no two people speak quite the same language.<br>· Why humans have language, but chimps don't.<br>· How language gave us a big brain and changed the course of evolution.<br>· How language doesn't limit, but does shape, how we think.<br>·And ultimately, why all we know about language should give us hope.<br><br>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.</p>
<p>'Marvellously clear... playfully persuasive' Richard Dawkins<br>'Full of Fascinating details. A delight to read.' Tim Harford<br>'Highly original and convincing ... a delight to read!' - Daniel Everett<br><br>What is language?<br>Why do we have it?<br>Why does that matter?<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>· How our short-lived memory copes with the on-rushing deluge of sound that is everyday speech.<br>· Why it is that language is such a challenge for language scientists but learnt effortlessly by toddlers.<br>· Why the languages of the world are so spectacularly varied---and why no two people speak quite the same language.<br>· Why humans have language, but chimps don't.<br>· How language gave us a big brain and changed the course of evolution.<br>· How language doesn't limit, but does shape, how we think.<br>·And ultimately, why all we know about language should give us hope.<br><br>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.</p>