From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Children may start to speak at a year, but that's hardly the beginning, as Yale linguist and psychologist Yang shows in this engrossing book. Babies recognize the first elements of language before birth, start to babble at three to four months and can memorize and recognize the sounds of words at six to nine months. Yang uses this fascinating progression to explain one of the core theories of contemporary linguistics: Noam Chomsky's universal grammar, that human understanding of language is in the genes. Yang takes the theory a step further in arguing that the keys to acquiring language are not in the learning, but in unlearning: "Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language spoken in a child's environment.... This theory of language takes both nature and nurture into account: nature proposes, and nurture disposes." Yang unfolds this complex argument systematically and with appealing animation, using creative examples—his son's first word, neurological experiments, baseball analogies—to keep the narrative moving. For readers who will never venture into the field to study language acquisition, he reveals that some of the most exciting linguistic experiments are happening much closer to home. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more About the Author Charles Yang teaches linguistics and psychology at Yale University. Trained as a computer scientist at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, he has written extensively on children and language and contributes articles to The London Review of Books, among other literary publications. He lives in Delaware with his wife, a frequent research collaborator, and young son, a frequent research subject. Read more
R**N
Language is an infinite gift and Yang explains it infinitely well!
I really learned a lot from this book. I think this is the first bookthat I have read, which explains in layman terms all the revolutionarystuff that has been happening in linguistics for the last 50 years.A must read for anyone interested in understanding how languagesfunction inside our brains, and how children acquire their particularnative language.
P**Y
A captivating read.
Despite my own lack of linguistic training I did not find this dry. The writer has an engaging, conversational style, and makes the technical aspects accessible to all. (If you can make tree-diagrams seem compelling, you have achieved something special.) A good book for parents curious about language development, and amateur-linguists alike.
W**N
Great book about language acquisition
This is a great book if you want to have an informed view while you watch your (grand)children learn their native language. It is fascinating to watch children do just what current theory says they will do!This book is mainly for people who are used to thinking about technical and abstract stuff. I already knew a little about the subject and found the book at just the right level -- the author communicates the basic ideas but does not get bogged down in excessive detail.
A**A
must read
Must read it.
B**N
i recommend to linguists everywhere
This was required for my Ling50D class and was a captivating read on the mind and language, i recommend to linguists everywhere!
L**W
Overview of current research on language acquisition
The book interprets the current research on language acquisition for the non-academic. There is a lot of meat here. While it's presented in a very readable way, it is not for the casual reader.It gave me a better understanding of how grammar as an organizing concept plays out in first language development and once established provides impediments to learning subsequent languages.For someone interested in languages, there is a lot of food for thought, such as the compounding of words in Eskimo and that the vowel shift that we see in the US is also observable in the speeches of Queen Elizabeth II.The last chapter on the superiority of the German language lost me. As a non academic, I don't have the tools to refute the thesis. It would seem, though, that even on the hypothetical desert island, to predict the surviving language, more variables than grammar should enter into the equation. English (a grammatical child of German) did survive Latin and French on the Islands of Great Britain. I'd be interested in a discussion of the commonly considered factors (adaptivity, King Alfred, literature, etc) against grammar.
D**B
Pretty good read
I got interested in lingustics by reading Steve Pinker's books. But what I learned after reading this book is some of the things Pinker presents as settled cases are actually not so settled. In the Infinite Gift, Yang presents a veiw of language aquisition that seems different than Pinker on the surface, untyil you realize the language instinct is more about how kids learn language in total while this book applies more specifically to the aquisition of grammer.I highly recomment reading this and the language instinct, especially to those who have kids and view them at least partially as little labs for learning about language aquisition. I think the two books together are much better than either alone.
R**N
Great review of important scientific developments about our innate language faculty
I often used to wonder, given that the cognitive revolution happened all the way back in 1956, why weren't there more popular books on linguistics (and indeed other cognitive abilities). This great book fills the gap beautifully. Yang writes in a very engaging, often funny manner, without making big claims. He provides plenty of references and gives concrete examples and references to experiments which provide persuasive evidence for the fact that our language ability is based on an innate system. All in all, Charles Yang has written a great book.
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