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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Sociolinguistics
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The Truth about Language - What It Is and Where It Came From (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R794
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The Truth about Language - What It Is and Where It Came From (Hardcover)
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Evolutionary science has long viewed language as, basically, a
fortunate accident a crossing of wires that happened to be
extraordinarily useful, setting humans apart from other animals and
onto a trajectory that would see their brains (and the products of
those brains) become increasingly complex. But as Michael C.
Corballis shows in The Truth about Language, it's time to
reconsider those assumptions. Language, he argues, is not the
product of some "big bang" 60,000 years ago, but rather the result
of a typically slow process of evolution with roots in elements of
grammatical language found much farther back in our evolutionary
history. Language, Corballis explains, evolved as a way to share
thoughts and, crucially for human development, to connect our own
"mental time travel," our imagining of events and people that are
not right in front of us, to that of other people. We share that
ability with other animals, but it was the development of language
that made it powerful: it led to our ability to imagine other
perspectives, to imagine ourselves in the minds of others, a
development that, by easing social interaction, proved to be an
extraordinary evolutionary advantage. Even as his thesis challenges
such giants as Chomsky and Stephen Jay Gould, Corballis writes
accessibly and wittily, filling his account with unforgettable
anecdotes and fascinating historical examples. The result is a book
that's perfect both for deep engagement and as brilliant fodder for
that lightest of all forms of language, cocktail party chatter.
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