The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.81 (819 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0743237560 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-01-15 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
. He lives in Delaware with his wife, a frequent research collaborator, and young son, a frequent research subject. Trained as a computer scientist at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, he has written extensively on children and language and contributes articles to The London Review of Books, among other literary publications. Charle
i recommend to linguists everywhere Brandon This was required for my Ling50D class and was a captivating read on the mind and language, i recommend to linguists everywhere!. A captivating read. Despite my own lack of linguistic training I did not find this dry. The writer has an engaging, conversational style, and makes the technical aspects accessible to all. (If you can make tree-diagrams seem compelling, you have achieved something special.) A good book for parents curious about language development, and amateur-linguists alike.. Great book about language acquisition Wellsoberlin This is a great book if you want to have an informed view while you watch your (grand)children learn their native language. It is fascinating to watch children do just what current theory says they will do!This book is mainly for people who are used to thinking about technical and abstract stuff. I already knew a little about the subject and found the book at just the right level -- the au
Yang uses this fascinating progression to explain one of the core theories of contemporary linguistics: Noam Chomsky's universal grammar, that human understanding of language is in the genes. All rights reserved. Yang takes the theory a step further in arguing that the keys to acquiring language are not in the learning, but in unlearning: "Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language spoken in a child's environment. From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Children may start to speak at a year, but that's hardly the beginning, as Yale linguist and psychologist Yang shows in this engrossing book. For readers who will never venture into t
This means that the next time you hear a child make a grammatical mistake, it may not be a mistake at all; his or her grammar may be perfectly correct in Chinese or Navajo or ancient Greek. This is the brain's way of testing its options as it searches for the local and thus correct grammar -- and then discards all the wrong ones. An absorbing read for parents, educators, and anyone who has ever wondered about the origins of that uniquely human gift: our ability to speak and, just as miraculous, to understand one another.. Yang illuminates the rich mysteries of language: why French newborns already prefer the sound of French to English; why baby-talk, though often unintelligible, makes perfect linguistic sense; why babies born deaf still babble -- but with their hands; why the grammars of some languages may be evolutionarily stronger than others; and why one of the brain's earliest achievements may in fact be its most complex. But that first word is soon followed by a second and a third, and by the age of three, children are typically learning ten new words every day and speaking in complete sentences. Enlivened by Yang's experiences with his own young son, The Infinite Gift is as charming as it is challenging, as thoughtful as it is thought-provoking. In fact, learning by unlearning may be an ancient evolutionary mechanism that runs throughout the animal kingdom. Thus, babies learn to talk in much the same way that birds learn to sing. A chil