The Unfolding of Language [Hardcover]

If I told you how it works, you wouldn't buy the book...fascinating...it will stretch your mind

'Enthralling' A.S. Byatt

A brilliant and original exploration of how languages evolve and have evolved, comparable to Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct in its accessibility, wit and ambition.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Blending the spirit of Bill Bryson' s Mother Tongue with the science of Steven Pinker' s The Language Instinct, The Unfolding of Language is a remarkably original inquiry into the development of that most essential - and mysterious - of human creations: language. ' Language is mankind' s greatest invention - except of course, that it was never invented.' So begins linguist Guy Deutscher' s enthralling investigation into the evolution of language. No one believes that the Roman Senate sat down one day to design the complex system that is Latin grammar, and few believe, these days, in the literal truth of the story of the Tower of Babel . But then how did there come to be so many languages, and of such elaborate design? If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of ' man throw spear' , how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced shades of meaning? Drawing on recent, groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving us fresh insight into how language is formed, evolves, and decays. He traces the emergence of linguistic complexity from an early evolutionary ' Me Tarzan' stage to the astonishing power of languages today, with their capacity to express even the subtlest thoughts and ideas. Arguing that destruction and creation in language are intimately entwined, Deutscher shows how these processes are continuously in operation, generating new words, new structures, and new meanings. From the written records of lost civilizations to the spoken idiom of today' s streets, we move nimbly from ancient Babylonian through medieval French to the English of the present. We marvel at the staggering triumph of design that is the Semitic verb, puzzle over single words that can express highly elaborate sentiments, such as the Turkish sehirlilestiremediklerimizdensiniz (' you are one of those whom we couldn' t turn into a town-dweller' ), and learn how great changes of pronunciation may result from simple laziness. Through the dramatic story of The Unfolding of Language, we discover the genius behind a uniquely human faculty.

'Enthralling' A.S. Byatt

A brilliant and original exploration of how languages evolve and have evolved, comparable to Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct in its accessibility, wit and ambition. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

How do languages evolve? Why does language always change – and does it decline or does it progress? What accounts for its extraordinary complexity? In The Unfolding of Language, Guy Deutscher responds to the big questions with big answers, along the way solving such mysteries as

* Why German maidens are neuter while German turnips are female
* How Islam, Muslim, and Solomon are all variations on the same Semitic root, s-l-m ("be at peace")
* How the design of Sumerian (the language spoken 5,000 years ago by the people who kick-started history) is so sophisticated that even a gap in the middle of a word can convey specific information
* Why we have feet and not foots
* Why the Turks seem to be talking ‘back to front’
* How the French came to say "on the day of on the day of this day" when they mean "today"
* Why most of the world’s languages don’t have a verb for "have" – and how one goes about expressing the notion of possession without it
* How words manage to accomplish a complete U-turn in their meaning over a relatively short time – like the word "resent," which, in the seventeenth century, meant "appreciate" or "feel grateful for"
* Why human intuition – as evidenced by all human languages – discovered the connection between space and time thousands of years before Einstein

'A highly original study of the evolution of language... A brilliant solution to a quandary that has puzzled people for many centuries... If [the] decay and simplification [of language] are constant and universal...how did...regular and complex languages come to exist in the first place? Deutscher's chosen task is to unravel that paradox, and he does so brilliantly, withholding the secret with great skill. If I told you how it works, you wouldn't buy the book. Suffice to say his explanation is both clever and convincing' Independent on Sunday

'Language is mankind's greatest invention - except of course, that it was never invented.'So begins Guy Deutscher's enthralling investigation into the evolution of language.No one believes that the Roman Senate sat down one day to design the complex system that is Latin grammar, and few believe, these days, in the literal truth of the story of the Tower of Babel. But then how did there come to be so many languages, and of such elaborate design?If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of 'man throw spear', how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced shades of meaning?

Drawing on recent, groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication. We learn why German maidens are neuter while German turnips are female, why we have feet not foots, and how great changes of pronunciation may result from simple laziness...

'He really ought to be read...by anyone who persists in complaining that the English language is going to the dogs... Interesting and substantial' Sunday Telegraph

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Born in Israel in 1971, Guy Deutscher read Maths at Cambridge before doing a PhD in linguistics. He teaches at the University of Leiden in Holland.

A Castle in the Air

C'est un langage estrange que le Basque . . .
On dit qu'ils s'entendent, je n'en croy rien.

Basque is really a strange language . . .
It is said that they understand one another,
but I don't believe any of it.

Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609)

Everyone knows that the words of a language, from its aardvarks to its zucchini, lend meaning to our utterances, and allow us to understand one another. And it is because foreign languages use so many strange words that we cannot understand them without years of labour. Even Joseph Scaliger, the most erudite scholar of his day, a polyglot not only fluent in Latin, Greek and most of the modern languages of Europe, but also self-taught in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and Persian, still had to give up on Basque, because it used completely different words for absolutely everything. The effort of memorizing many thousands of words so overwhelms our perception of what language learning is all about that it may easily lead to the impression that knowing a language just comes down to knowing its words. Surely, if one could only recognize the meaning of each word, all one would need to do is add all these meanings up somehow, in order to grasp the sense of a whole sentence. But if this is!
so, and language ultimately amounts to just words, then isn't the quest for the origin of structure merely an intellectual wild goose chase?

On reflection, however, it soon becomes clear that language is much more than the sum of its words. In fact, a language with only words, and no structure to prop them up, would be a poor instrument of communication. Words may be the bricks in the language edifice, but when we want to convey subtle thoughts, involving intricate relations between different concepts, we need to combine words into proper sentences. The structure of language is what can turn a pile of word-bricks into a palace of expressions - a castle in the air.

As a simple illustration, consider the following example:

Head vizier Sultan troops the of to the his the brought

If the meaning of a sentence is nothing more than the sum of its words, then why doesn't this one amount to any substance at all, even though the meaning of each word is perfectly familiar? The reason is that there is an essential feature missing from this sentence, and exactly what that is becomes clear as soon as one takes the very same words and arranges them in a different order. Suddenly, they leap into sense:

The Sultan brought his vizier to the head of the troops.

In this arrangement, the words convey a detailed event involving various participants, and now describe not only who these participants are, but also exactly who is doing what to whom. And to remove any lingering suspicion that the choice of words by itself dictates the meaning of a sentence, consider what happens when the same words are once again juggled into a different order:

The troops brought to the Sultan the head of his vizier.

There are many well-turned aphorisms which play on exactly such word permutations: 'better to lose a moment in life than to lose life in a moment'; Mae West's 'a hard man is good to find'; or the definition of 'foreign aid' as the transfer of money 'from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries'. One of my favourites is Kermit the Frog's rearrangement of a well-worn clichŽ: 'time's fun when you're having flies' (although note that he allows himself some poetic licence by sneaking in an additional 's). But most famous, perhaps, is Alice's conversation at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party:

'Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on. 'I do,' Alice hastily replied; 'at least - at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing, you know.' 'Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter, 'Why, you might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!' 'You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, 'that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!' 'You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, 'that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!'

Clearly, then, the sense of a sentence depends not only on the meaning of each word but also on the particular arrangement in which these words are joined. The choice of meaning matters, but just as much the order of the combination. (Or you might as well say that 'the choice of order matters just as much to the meaning of the combination'.)

Now a natural reaction to all this might run along the following lines: of course it matters in which arrangement words are combined, but don't we simply put the words in the natural order? Doesn't the order of words in the sentence simply follow the natural order of ideas? To see why things are not so simple, consider another variation on the Sultan theme, in the example below:

Sultan vizier his troops his of head their to brought.