The Unfolding Of Language: The Evolution of Mankind`s greatest Invention [Formato Kindle]

This book is a very interesting attempt to present an explanation for the origin of some of the features of today's language structures. The author does not try to go back to the very beginning of language itself, but takes his story from the point where words already existed, but most grammatical structure had not yet evolved, still before any language of which a record survives.

The author uses examples in present-day languages to illustrate processes in linguistic evolution that are currently taking place or have taken place recently enough to be well documented. This lends a lot of credibility to his ideas.

Because the author was born in Israel (presumably having modern Israeli Hebrew as his first language) and has become a specialist in Semitic historical linguistics, he presents more examples from Semitic languages than one often sees in popular linguistics books intended for the English-language reader, but it is all written in a very easily understood way, and I find the book as readable as if it had been written by a native speaker of English, though with a few signs that the English which the author learned was more British than American.

There is only one negative comment I would make, and that does not sufficiently detract from the value of the book that I would deny it a 5-star rating: I wish that the author would more clearly separate his own personal speculations from the ideas which are believed by the majority of linguistics professionals. It is clear that a lot of the ideas presented in this book are the author's own, but it is not clear how many.

Guy Deutscher makes learning about language fun in his book The Unfolding Of Language. Deutscher, a mathematician turned linguist, has a great sense of humor and a joy for his subject that comes through in his writing. The author takes what could be a really dry subject [think back to language classes [both English and foreign] in high school - bet you really liked conjugating all those verbs!] and most of the time makes it glide by as the reader gets a fairly deep education on the evolution of language. My biggest complaint about the book [and the reason for my agonized over 4 star rating] is that it starts to feel like overtime has been called towards the end of the book. I think Deutscher already had a sense of this since what could've ended up as 5 more chapters [or at least additions to 5 existing chapters] are attached at the back of the book as Appendices A through F. I have nothing against detail, but would've liked to have seen more of the material sent to the back of the book as extended notes or another appendix. Still, I feel that The Unfolding Of Language is a very worthwhile read, worth the effort, and I learned a lot and had a good time doing it!

I loved this book. I've read several books on linguistics; but this has to be the best of the lot. It's so fun to read that I didn't want to put it down. (I even found myself laughing out loud several times while reading it.) In addition to being fun to read, it's very informative. I took a couple of linguistics courses in college, have read a number of books on the subject, and have studied the rudiments of several languages; but I think I've learned more about language from this book than I learned in all of my previous studies. If you're a student of linguistics, foreign languages, or English grammar (or even if you have only a passing interest in these subjects), you've got to read this book.

The purpose of the book is to explain how and why language changes over time: How did we get from simple "me Tarzan" grunts to the complex linguistic structures of languages like Latin? Why is the English spoken today so different from the English spoken only a few centuries ago? How are the various languages of the world related to each other -- and how do we account for the similarities and differences between them? In order to answer these questions, the book takes us on a fascinating (and fun) tour of language; delving into the often mysterious world of grammar, usage, and phonetics; shedding some much-needed light on everything from the multiple declensions of Latin, to the 3-consonant root system of the Semitic languages, to the seemingly bizarre discrepancy between French spelling and pronunciation, to the importance of word order, to why a "father" is actually a "pater", and how a "pod" became a "foot". If you're into language, you won't be disappointed with this book. It's very insightful.