000			a
999			_c30911 _d30911
008			220601b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9781541674981
082			_a401 _bCHR
100			_aChristiansen, Morten H.
245			_aLanguage game : how improvisation created language and changed the world
260			_bBasic Books, _c2022 _aNew York :
300			_avii, 291 p. ; _bill., _c25 cm
365			_b30.00 _cUSD _d80.00
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520			_aThink about the game charades. Its rules are simple: no talking, of course, and little else. Each time we play with a new group, we have to figure each other out, with our different styles, backgrounds, and senses of the world, as we struggle to connect how we would act out something (say, Christopher Columbus crossing the Atlantic) with how other people might understand it. But as we play, a lingo can develop-with time, an upheld hand, bobbing along, might not just come to represent the ship on the Santa Maria, but a vast range of possibilities, including both conceptual ones such as exploration or trade, actions like sailing, or even a place like India or Santo Domingo. Almost from nothing, the players can create something like a language. Such nearly rule-less games are a hallmark of the human species: testament not just to our intelligence, but our flexibility of mind as well as our desires to cooperate, to understand, and to be understood. In The Language Game, cognitive scientists Nick Chater and Morten Christiansen show games like charades reveal something more: where language comes from and how it works. Language is perhaps humanity's most astonishing traits, and one of its most studied, but as Chater and Christiansen, it has been our most poorly understood. Several generations of scientists sought to understand how the rules of language could be hardwired in the brain. It was a colossal mistake. Chater and Christiansen show that language is hardly about rules at all, let alone those welded into our brain by evolution, but rather about near-total freedom, where the only real constraints are our imaginations and our desire to be understood. And with that as the point of departure, they are able to find compelling solutions to old riddles and new puzzles, including why chimpanzees don't understand pointing fingers; whether having two words for "blue" changes what we see; why Danish is so much harder to learn than Norwegian; how words change meanings; and whether computers will ever truly understand a human. The Language Game will bewitch readers of classic books on mind and language, such as Douglas Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach and John McWhorter's The Power of Babel, and find a welcome spot on the shelf of readers of Joseph Henrich's Weirdest People in the World and Frans de Waal's Mama's Last Hug. And like the game of charades, it will engage, amuse, and dazzle readers for years to come.
650			_aCognitive grammar
650			_aLanguage arts and disciplines
650			_aAdaptationist view
650			_aBehavior cocrdination
650			_aCommunication
650			_aCultural evolution
650			_aDiyari language
650			_a Europe, languages
650			_a Foxp2 gene
650			_a Focal points
650			_aGPT-3
650			_aHominin evolution
650			_a Information transfer theory
650			_a KE family
650			_aMicroorganism, symbiosis
650			_aNavajo language
650			_aOna language
650			_a Piirahi language
650			_aSensory loss
650			_aTransmission model;
650			_aVocal Iconicity Challenge
650			_aWug test
700			_aChater, Nick.
942			_2ddc _cBK