The Atoms Of Language The Mind s Hidden Rules Of Grammar Whether all human languages are fundamentally the same or different has been a subject of debate for ages This problem has deep philosophical implications If languages are all the same it implies a f
Whether all human languages are fundamentally the same or different has been a subject of debate for ages This problem has deep philosophical implications If languages are all the same, it implies a fundamental commonality and thus mutual intelligibility of human thought.We are now on the verge of solving this problem Using a twenty year old theory proposed by the worWhether all human languages are fundamentally the same or different has been a subject of debate for ages This problem has deep philosophical implications If languages are all the same, it implies a fundamental commonality and thus mutual intelligibility of human thought.We are now on the verge of solving this problem Using a twenty year old theory proposed by the world s greatest living linguist, Noam Chomsky, researchers have found that the similarities among languages are profound than the differences Languages whose grammars seem completely incompatible may in fact be structurally almost identical, except for a difference in one simple rule The discovery of these rules and how they may vary promises to yield a linguistic equivalent of the Periodic Table of the Elements a single framework by which we can understand the fundamental structure of all human language This is a landmark breakthrough both within linguistics, which will herewith finally become a full fledged science, and in our understanding of the human mind.
-
The Atoms Of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules Of Grammar - Mark C. Baker
193
Mark C. Baker
-
Title:
The Atoms Of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules Of Grammar - Mark C. Baker
Posted by:
Published :2019-05-15T23:41:39+00:00
Mark C. Baker Is a well-known author, some of his books are a fascination for readers like in theThe Atoms Of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules Of Grammar book, this is one of the most wanted Mark C. Baker author readers around the world.
168 Replys to “The Atoms Of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules Of Grammar”
This book is amazing! It's one of those scientific books written for a general audience that finds just the right balance of good writing and rigorous science. The only other book I could compare it to (not in terms of content but in terms of quality writing and cumulative effect) is Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene. Like that book, this one finds stories and metaphors that make it really easy to understand otherwise difficult concepts. Yet like that one, this book doesn't take the metaphors to [...]
I checked this one out from the town library. Imagine that, a book about syntax from the local library. I think the librarian who bought the book must have been convinced that syntax was really hard science this time, not likely to morph in each coming decade. And anyway, according to Chomsky's latest, Chomsky is Galileo and Copernicus rolled into one.If you have read this far you have guessed that I don't much care for this book. For starters, it is dishonest. There is no periodic table of synt [...]
The problem with linguistics is that it’s still wedded to the humanistic disciplines of anthropology and history, which have arbitrarily classified languages by lexicon, proximity or some other, unscientific criterion. In The Atoms of Language, Mark Baker uses the analogy of the periodic table of elements to argue that languages can be similarly – and more usefully – classified in terms of elements (“parameters”) that combine to produce the variety we see around us. As he writes in the [...]
I absolutely loved this book. The author is a riot!! I laughed aloud at least thirty times while reading this. Mark Baker is really quite an entertaining writer. Really an outstanding job.The content was very interesting. It was not perfect -- there were a lot of strange examples of English, for example, and the Japanese was very unusual -- but all in all I thought it was very enlightening. Mark Baker did a good job of recognizing things that were imperfect or questionable as such. I appreciated [...]
Solid, interesting book about linguistics. A little heady and academic, and full of a few too many examples, but fascinating nonetheless.
Thought-provoking, original (in my limited experience). Before reading this book, I only thought about the differences in language, but afterwards I see more similarities among languages, which I think is a good thing. Humans do love categorization! I found the parameters a helpful way to think about grammatical language without getting bogged down by the differences in the lexicons. Worth a read, especially if you are interested in translation, natural language processing, or linguistics.
This could have been a much better book. If the author had left conjecture aside and tread lightly with the language-as-chemistry metaphor I might have been able to hang in there the whole way. Part of this is my fault though, I'm sure: My interest in grammar exists but is finite.
interesting!
Linguistics knows of about 10000 languages. Each has a unique grammar, which native speakers more or less learn by age 5. Now, say Baker, Chomsky and other Chomskian linguists, each language has too many peculiar grammatical features that set it apart from other languages; it would have made more sense if there were Boolean "parameters": when a child learns the value of a parameter, he knows several grammatical features at once. English is a head-first language; in English, a verb usually comes [...]
In short, I thought this book was excellentwith the caveat that you really have to have an interest in how language works to stay with it.While there are a lot of sub-texts in the book, the major issue is that of the parameterization of language. Specifically, how do we give a scientific(ish) account for the diversity of language we see. Further, how, given the fact that languages appear so different from one another, are we able to effectively (more or less) translate from one to another.The an [...]
Baker is a follower of Chomsky's theories (and was his student). He tackles the issue from the perspective of syntax, his specialization. Baker writes that no matter how exotic or complex or impossible to decipher a foreign language in our planet might look (or might have looked), it does/did still contain a subject [someone or something responsible for the event], a verb [what is being done] and an object [someone or something to what that is being done]. All 6,000 known languages of the world [...]
I see that some have called this book dull, and I can understand why--it's not for everyone. I can also see why the technical aspects of the book might put some off, but that wasn't the effect it had on me. I only had a semester of linguistics in college, and this was easy enough for me to follow. But, again, you'll need to be a serious language geek to care about this stuff. Luckily, that's what I am.Baker's conceptual frame of parameters and the language parallels to Mendeleyev's early work on [...]
Very good introductory book - the idea of parameters has lost some of its ground in recent years with the advent of the Minimalist Program and Biolinguistics at large. But as Ian Roberts is now thinking about the Minimalist Parameter and about parameter hierarchies and macroparameters it is certainly worthwile to go back to this text written by one of the foremost theoreticians and practicioners of parametric syntax. The book is well written, alternating storytelling (about the Navajo code break [...]
oh boy i think the guy has some really good ideas in there somewhere but this book is not for the novice or the faint-hearted. in fact, the initiated (i've an ma) may find this off-putting. the vast majority of the main section of this book is interminably dull: a catalogue of linguisti minutae which, though put together form something incredibly profound, find my view of the wood obscured by trees.[return][return]i'm going to have to put this to one side despite it being my second attempt and c [...]
Well-written and interesting, although I'm not sure I would have been able to stick with it without the framework of my linguistics class. Baker tends to veer off into the very abstract without much warning but if you are interested in universal principles of language but take crazy old papa Chomsky with a grain of salt - not to mention very committed to bearing with Baker - this is the book for you. Overall this is a great introduction into contemporary issues in linguistics.
Fascinating and accessible intro to one particular school of linguistic theory & syntactic concepts through an extended chemical analogy. Obviously there is more to linguistics despite what this book presents as a universal framework for understanding language, but this seems as good a place to start as any. I found the concluding "Why Parameters?" chapter to be the weakest in that it suddenly pulls in a lot of new threads without quite enough space to play each one out.
I read this book as part of the MIT Open CourseWare Intro Linguistics course, and I liked it a lot. The book is a gentle-but-not-too-gentle overview of the theory of parameters. After finishing it, I find myself intrigued and excited to dive deeper into the study of syntax.
Really not for those not interested in grammar and parameters. It's a good primer for one studying general linguistics, semantics, applied linguistics, or cognitive linguistics. It opened up a whole new way of looking at language for me. I thoroughly enjoyed it but it would take a couple reads to understand it fully. RIYL: John McWhorter's TTC series in linguistics.
The bio says that this is the author's first non-academic book. It didn't need to say that: this is a tough read. But it's pretty amazing, if you're interested in linguistics. It provides both the underlying structure and a lot of support for Steven Pinker's ideas in The Language Instinct.
I'm sure this is a good book. I greatly appreciate his usage of analogies. However, far too technical for me to appreciate at the moment — that is, I want to learn about linguistics more before I read chapters on certain parameters. I'll pick it up again later.
An exceptional book, lots of information and often times to much information to fully take in. A book that almost has to be read a couple of times in order to fully get the message and how it can be applied.
Really liked it, although my eyes (brain?) glazed over for a couple chapters of really intense grammar discussions. But that felt like my fault, not the book's. it was well-written and clear and there was a subtle sense of humor and humility that I really appreciated.
"The Atoms of Language" is a fairly whirlwind tour of linguistics' parameter theory, the author's synthesis of many others' work into a readable, non-textbook, light-on-the-philosophy digest.Great if you're into that sort of thing ;)
really interesting analogy between language and chemistry (atoms).
Like it
am up to page 73 so far & really love this book
Clearly written and artfully balances simplicity with complexity.
#bfpl #curriculum #linguistics
It's slow going, but interesting and full of ideas/insights for poets
An informative and yet easy to read book that talks about Parameters and universal Grammar.