HSPLS site
Login
My List - 0
Help
Search
My Account
Databases
HI Newspaper
eBooks/Audiobooks
Learning
PC Reservation
Reading Program
Basic
Advanced
Power
History
Search:
Title Browse
Author Browse
Subject Browse
Best Seller Browse
Music Title Browse
Video/DVD Title Browse
Journal/Newspaper Title Browse
Serial Title Browse
Series Browse (includes Bestseller List)
General Keyword
Title Keyword
Author Keyword
Subject Keyword
Name Keyword
Series Keyword
Score Title Browse
Talking Book Title Browse
Awards Note Browse
Bib No.
Barcode
Refine Search
> You're searching:
HAWAII STATE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM
Item Information
Holdings
Summary
More Content
More by this author
Christiansen, Morten H., 1963- author.
Subjects
Language and languages -- Origin.
Language and languages -- Philosophy.
Cognitive grammar.
Browse Catalog
by author:
Christiansen, Morten H., 1963- author.
by title:
The language game : ...
MARC Display
The language game : how improvisation created language and changed the world / Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater.
by
Christiansen, Morten H., 1963- author.
New York : Basic Books, 2022.
Subjects
Language and languages -- Origin.
Language and languages -- Philosophy.
Cognitive grammar.
ISBN:
9781541674981 (hardcover) :
1541674987 (hardcover) :
Description:
vii, 291 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm
Edition:
First edition.
Contents:
The Accidental Invention That Changed The World -- Language As Charades -- The Fleeting Nature Of Language -- The Unbearable Lightness Of Meaning -- Linguistic Order At The Edge Of Chaos -- Language Evolution Without Biological Evolution -- Following In Each Other's Footsteps -- Endless Forms Most Beautiful -- The Virtuous Circle: Brains, Culture, And Language -- Language Will Save Us From The Singularity.
Requests:
0
Summary:
"Think about the game charades. Its rules are simple: no talking, of course, and little else. Each time we play with a new group, we have to figure each other out, with our different styles, backgrounds, and senses of the world, as we struggle to connect how we would act out something (say, Christopher Columbus crossing the Atlantic) with how other people might understand it. But as we play, a lingo can develop-with time, an upheld hand, bobbing along, might not just come to represent the ship on the Santa Maria, but a vast range of possibilities, including both conceptual ones such as exploration or trade, actions like sailing, or even a place like India or Santo Domingo. Almost from nothing, the players can create something like a language. Such nearly rule-less games are a hallmark of the human species: testament not just to our intelligence, but our flexibility of mind as well as our desires to cooperate, to understand, and to be understood. In The Language Game, cognitive scientists Nick Chater and Morten Christiansen show games like charades reveal something more: where language comes from and how it works. Language is perhaps humanity's most astonishing traits, and one of its most studied, but as Chater and Christiansen, it has been our most poorly understood. Several generations of scientists sought to understand how the rules of language could be hardwired in the brain. It was a colossal mistake. Chater and Christiansen show that language is hardly about rules at all, let alone those welded into our brain by evolution, but rather about near-total freedom, where the only real constraints are our imaginations and our desire to be understood. And with that as the point of departure, they are able to find compelling solutions to old riddles and new puzzles, including why chimpanzees don't understand pointing fingers; whether having two words for "blue" changes what we see; why Danish is so much harder to learn than Norwegian; how words change meanings; and whether computers will ever truly understand a human. The Language Game will bewitch readers of classic books on mind and language, such as Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach and John McWhorter's The Power of Babel, and find a welcome spot on the shelf of readers of Joseph Henrich's Weirdest People in the World and Frans de Waal's Mama's Last Hug. And like the game of charades, it will engage, amuse, and dazzle readers for years to come"--
Copy/Holding information
Location
Collection
Call No.
Status
Hawaii State Library
Language, Literature & History
401 Ch
Checked In
Add Copy to MyList
Kapaa Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
401 Ch
Checked In
Add Copy to MyList
Horizon Information Portal 3.25_9884
© 2001-2013
SirsiDynix
All rights reserved.