Email RIS file
Bookmark
Report an Issue

Language [electronic resource] : the cultural tool / Daniel L. Everett

Author
Everett, Daniel L. (Daniel Leonard)
Published
London : Profile, 2012.
Physical Description
1 online resource (528 pages) : illustrations
Access Online

Availability

I Want It
I Want It

Finding items...

Contents
The gift of Prometheus -- Problems. Language as a social tool ; From fire to communication ; Crossing the communication threshold ; Does Plato have a problem? -- Solutions. Universals and faculties ; How to build a language ; The platforms for language -- Applications. Aristotle's answer : interaction and the construction of cultural sighs ; Language the tool -- Variations. Language, culture, and thinking ; You drink. You drive. You go to jail. Cultural effects on grammar ; Welcome to the Freak Show -- Grammars of happiness -- Appendix. Extract from Plato's "Meno."
Summary
Like other tools, language was invented, can be reinvented or lost, and shows significant variation across cultures. It's as essential to survival as fire - and, like fire, is found in all human societies. Language presents the bold and controversial idea that language is not an innate component of the brain, as has been famously argued by Chomsky and Pinker. Rather, it's a cultural tool which varies much more across different societies than the innateness view suggests. Fusing adventure, anthropology, linguistics and psychology, and drawing on Everett's pioneering research with the Amazonian.
Subject(s)
ISBN
9781847654151 (electronic bk.)
1847654150 (electronic bk.)
Note
AVAILABLE ONLINE TO AUTHORIZED PSU USERS.
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Technical Details
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
View MARC record | catkey: 8159430