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The Language Game

How improvisation created language and changed the world

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The Language Game

Written by: Morten H. Christiansen, Nick Chater
Narrated by: Peter Noble
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

What is language? Why do we have it? Where does it come from? Why does that matter?

Upending centuries of scholarship (including, most recently, Chomsky and Pinker) The Language Game shows how people learn to talk not by acquiring fixed meanings and rules, but by picking up, reusing, and recombining countless linguistic fragments in novel ways.

Drawing on entertaining and persuasive examples from across the world the book explains:
· How our short-lived memory copes with the on-rushing deluge of sound that is everyday speech.
· Why it is that language is such a challenge for language scientists but learnt effortlessly by toddlers.
· Why the languages of the world are so spectacularly varied---and why no two people speak quite the same language.
· Why humans have language, but chimps don't.
· How language gave us a big brain and changed the course of evolution
· How language doesn't limit, but does shape, how we think.
·And ultimately, why what we have come to understand about how language works, gives us greater hope for our future.

'Highly original and convincing ... a delight to read!' - Daniel Everett

© Morten H.Christiansen, Nick Chater 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

 Anthropology Communication & Social Skills Linguistics Logic & Language Philosophy Self-Help Social Sciences

Critic Reviews

The Language Game is a highly original, convincing story of how humans developed their greatest invention, language. A delight to read, it deserves careful study by anyone interested in the nature, function, and origins of human communication.

(Daniel Everett, author of Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes and How Language Began)
This book turned everything I thought I knew about language upside down. It's persuasive, full of fascinating details, and an absolute delight to read. (Tim Harford, author of How To Make The World Add Up)
Language was the Promethean fire that ignited the human explosion. Its origin is one of the three great mysteries that still tantalise evolutionary biologists. Christiansen and Chater give a marvellously clear explanation of the problem and a generously fair treatment of rival theories, followed by a lively, even playfully persuasive advocacy of their own solution. (Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene)
A joyful romp across species and cultures through the ways language is invented and reinvented, peppered with insightful stories you will feel compelled to tell anyone in earshot. (Barbara Tversky, author of Mind in Motion)
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