If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Have you ever wondered how a newborn baby manages to master the complex rules of grammar before they even learn to tie their shoelaces?
- Did you know that there are hidden forces constantly reshaping the way you speak, and what really happens to our shared history when a language disappears?
- Are you curious about the secret mechanics that allow a few simple vocal sounds to be transformed into an infinite variety of complex human thoughts?
Listen to How Language Works — Free Audiobook
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Key Takeaways from How Language Works
- Discover how human language uniquely relies on 'productivity' to express infinite ideas and 'duality of structure' to turn meaningless sounds into meaningful words.
- Understand why speech is a biologically evolved, universal human trait, while reading and writing are invented, unnatural skills that must be formally taught.
- Learn the fascinating ways the human body adapted specifically for speech, including physical changes to the larynx that actually increase our vulnerability to choking.
- Find out how the permanence and authority of the written word historically dictated the rules of grammar, artificially altering natural, everyday spoken language.
- Explore how an infant's babbling is actually a highly organized practice session for speech, where their cognitive understanding of words rapidly outpaces their physical ability to pronounce them.
How Language Works — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Language is a structured communication system built on productivity and structural duality.
Chapter 3: Language is chiefly communicated through spoken and written forms.
Chapter 4: We acquire core language rules early in life and refine them continuously.
Chapter 5: From its very beginning, language has ceaselessly evolved over time.
Chapter 6: Language families are powerful tools that illuminate humanity’s earliest history.
Chapter 7: Being multilingual is the typical human experience.
Chapter 8: Threatened languages can be revived when communities unite behind them.
How Language Works Summary & Overview
How Language Works (2005) unlocks the secrets of how and why we communicate. Language is one of the defining characteristics that makes humans human. But because it’s such a fundamental concept, we rarely take the time to think about where it comes from or how it evolves. These blinks examine the historical and personal origins of language and the many different ways it affects our daily lives.
Who Should Listen to How Language Works?
- Language lovers curious to learn how language works
- Those who appreciate the vast diversity of languages in the world
- People concerned about endangered or extinct languages
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