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The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar (Hardcover)

by Mark C. Baker (Author) "DEEP MYSTERIES OF LANGUAGE are illustrated by an incident that occurred in 1943, when the Japanese military was firmly entrenched around the Bismarck Archipelago ..." (more)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 250 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books (24 Dec 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0465005217
  • ISBN-13: 978-0465005215
  • Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 17.8 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 2,247,978 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

A major scientific breakthrough into the common elements of all languages, which give us a deeper insight than ever before into how the mind works. . 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 the mutual intelligibility-of human thought. We are now on the verge of answering this question. 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 more 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 thereby become a full-fledged science for the first time, and in our understanding of the human mind.


About the Author

Mark C. Baker received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from MIT in 1985. After teaching at MIT from 1985-1986, he became a professor at McGill University, where he taught from 1986 to 1998. Since 1998 he has been a professor in the Department of Linguistics and the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He is an expert on African and Native American languages, having studied Mohawk, Edo, Chichewa, Winnebago, Nupe, Kinande, and Mapuche, as well as Spanish and Urdu. He lives
in New Jersey with his wife and three children. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Too many trees obscure the wood, 27 Jul 2006
This review is from: The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar (Paperback)
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.

Basically, he takes a theory which isn't that new, namely that the world's languages are in fact related and share many more characteristics than (he assumes) was previously thought. But Chomsky posited this many moons ago and to drag us through endless comparisons of Welsh and Japanese is a) neither going to be comprehensive enough to convince the skeptical in a book of this genre or size nor b) going to grab the interest of those who already know the field relatively well.

My other criticism is that while he has the audacity to acknowledge that language as a cognitive-cultural product is actually having something of a revival among those in the know, he simply moves on. If he really wants to stick his head in the sand, he should have simply ignored this point. Rather, by mentioning this and not commenting, he risks showing that generative linguistics not only has little to offer the real world of language as a communicative, relational tool but that generative linguists are doing nothing to rid itself of this image. Perhaps the ivory tower gives a commanding view similar to that of Babel.

And for those who are into languages but not linguistics: be warned, this may turn you off!
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