The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary History of Mankind's Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher

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Sometimes, language stumps even world-famous writers. For example, German gender rules baffled Mark Twain. How, he wondered, could "young lady" be neuter, while "turnip" was feminine. In The Unfolding of Language, a Cambridge-trained linguist leads us on a diverting excursion through language in all its complexity and convolutions.

From the Publisher

Blending the spirit of Eats, Shoots & Leaves with the science of The Language Instinct, an original inquiry into the development of that most essential-and mysterious-of human creations: Language

Language is mankind's greatest invention-except, of course, that it was never invented." So begins linguist Guy Deutscher's enthralling investigation into the genesis and evolution of language. If we started off with rudimentary utterances on the level of "man throw spear," how did we end up with sophisticated grammars, enormous vocabularies, and intricately nuanced degrees of meaning?

Drawing on recent groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics, Deutscher exposes the elusive forces of creation at work in human communication, giving us fresh insight into how language emerges, evolves, and decays. He traces the evolution of linguistic complexity from an early "Me Tarzan" stage to such elaborate single-word constructions as the Turkish sehirlilestiremediklerimizdensiniz ("you are one of those whom we couldn't turn into a town dweller"). Arguing that destruction and creation in language are intimately entwined, Deutscher shows how these processes are continuously in operation, generating new words, new structures, and new meanings.

As entertaining as it is erudite, The Unfolding of Language moves nimbly from ancient Babylonian to American idiom, from the central role of metaphor to the staggering triumph of design that is the Semitic verb, to tell the dramatic story and explain the genius behind a uniquely human faculty.

Library Journal

Deutscher (linguistics, Univ. of Leiden, Holland) here takes the reader on a journey through the rich history of language, offering insight into our primary mode of communication as he discusses such topics as word order, shifting meaning, and the permanence of spelling (but not pronunciation) in English. He uses several languages and language families to elucidate his points, relying on their similarities and differences to clarify what would otherwise be a significantly more complex topic; his painstaking research is evident in the notes, glossary, and references. Those who enjoyed Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves for its easygoing style and wit will find no comfort here-when all is said and done, this is a tough read. Though linguists and academicians will find it an interesting tromp through the evolution of language, the text is not easily accessible to lay readers. Recommended for academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/05.]-Manya Chylinski, Boston Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The story of language from a multilingual perspective. Deutscher (Linguistics/Univ. of Leiden) takes particular effort to trace the way languages evolved into and from the complex structures we see in the Latin noun declensions or the Semitic verb system, to cite two examples. While many self-anointed experts decry the decay of language from a more perfect state, Deutscher argues that the same mechanisms work to build and to destroy linguistic structures. Prime among them are economy, novelty and analogy. Economy (more accurately, laziness) leads to dropping syllables or slurring vowels to make pronunciation easier. For example, the French word for the month of August, Aout (pronounced "oo") began as "Augustus," after the Roman emperor. Novelty often takes the form of metaphor, seeking new ways to express the abstract: "thrilled" originally meant "pierced," as by a spear-a sensation somewhat sharper than what is usually referred to by this word. And analogy leads us to apply known rules to unfamiliar situations, as when a young child says "foots" or "drinked." Deutscher smoothly combines a historical survey of linguistics with fascinating examples from both ancient and modern languages, showing family relationships between such words as "have" and "capture." The Semitic verb system uses unpronounceable triplets of consonants as its roots, fleshing them out with elaborate matrices of vowels to give the various spoken forms. Irregularities in this astonishingly complex system help us understand how it must have grown from a primitive system of roots modified by auxiliaries, much in the way that verb systems in other languages are believed to have evolved. Perhaps the most remarkableconclusion is that even the most elaborate languages are the product not of a single brilliant inventor, but of thousands of ordinary people, creating-almost by accident-one of the most profound and beautiful structures humanity has created. Witty, thought-provoking, constantly surprising.

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