Patterns In The Mind: Language And Human Nature

by Ray S Jackendoff

Overview

What is it about the human mind that accounts for the fact that we can speak and understand a language? Why can't other creatures do the same? And what does this tell us about the rest of human abilities? Recent dramatic discoveries in linguistics and psychology provide intriguing answers to these age-old mysteries. In this fascinating book, Ray Jackendoff emphasizes the grammatical commonalities across languages, both spoken and signed, and discusses the implications for our understanding of language acquisition and loss.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786724055
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	08/04/2008
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Ray Jackendoff, linguist and theoretical psychologist, is professor of linguistics at Brandeis University. He is the author of several books, including Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar, Semantics and Cognition, Consciousness and the Computational Mind, and Semantic Structures.

Editorial Reviews

Jackendorf updates the ground-breaking investigation into human language introduced by Noam Chomsky as "generative linguistics," in a conversational, accessible style. After reviewing current language theories, he links language to broader human capabilities, his ideas founded on the hypothesis that there exists a genetically determined specialization for language that embeds grammatical principles within the human brain. Human experience, in this view, is constructed out of such principles, which operate in music, vision, and, most speculatively, in social organization. Jackendorf also introduces the reader to research suggesting that there are structural similarities between signed and spoken language, that creole languages are created by children, and that there is a link among adult language impairments, language development in children, and the age factor in both. Helpful restatements at chapter ends and a reading list organized by topic encourage mastery of areas only touched upon in Jackendorf's discussion.

Virginia Dwyer