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If a Chimpanzee Could Talk and Other Reflections on Language Acquisition (Paperback, New)
Loot Price: R692
Discovery Miles 6 920
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If a Chimpanzee Could Talk and Other Reflections on Language Acquisition (Paperback, New)
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Total price: R712
Discovery Miles: 7 120
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How is it that chimpanzees can learn to "speak" at a higher level
than some so-called wolf children? What happened that day in the
pumphouse, when Helen Keller suddenly grasped the meaning of words?
And picture this: a father and mother who shun the advice of
professionals, who doggedly force their way into the closed world
of their autistic son, and who reverse his grim prognosis,
revealing him to be gifted. How to explain? In this book, a
philosopher combines these famous cases with a lifetime of study to
examine the threshold of language--that point "between speech and
not quite speech." He provides fascinating accounts of the deaf and
blind Helen Keller, of chimpanzees like Washoe, and of feral
children such as Victor, the "wild boy of Aveyron," putting a new
spin on their stories. When does it start, he asks, that miracle
most of us take for granted? Where does it come from, that uniquely
human power to transform perception and action into thought and the
singular activity we call speech? Here is evidence that, for chimp
or child, the crucial factors in acquiring language have less to do
with intellect and everything to do with social interaction. Here
is confirmation that the "give-and-take, push-and-pull" of daily
life forces virtually all of us to acquire language simply to live
and work together. Author Jerry Gill offers no pat answers. Rather,
he emphasizes imitation and reciprocity--for example, playing
pat-a-cake with a baby--as essential to becoming part of a speaking
community "and thereby becoming a human being." In addition, Gill
gives dozens of examples to show how gesture and facial expression
both create and change the meaning of language. In compelling
fashion, he underscores the point that language acquisition can be
fully understood only in terms of such physical and social
activity. The author exposes the flaws of research focused mainly
on mental processes and gives little credit to findings based upon
artificially contrived experiments. With vigor, compassion, and a
broad-minded humanism, these pages invite the reader to think again
about how we say what we mean, how we mean what we say, and where
it all starts in the first place. Valuable to students of
psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and anthropology, the book
will also appeal to general readers who welcome an opportunity to
explore familiar things in a new and entirely enjoyable way.
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