The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar [Paperback]

Mark C. Baker (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465005225 | ISBN-13: 978-0465005222 | Publication Date: October 8, 2002

Whether all human languages are fundamentally the same or different has been a subject of debate for ages. This problem has deep philosophical implications: If languages are all the same, it implies a fundamental commonality--and thus mutual intelligibility--of human thought.We are now on the verge of solving this problem. Using a twenty-year-old theory proposed by the world's greatest living linguist, Noam Chomsky, researchers have found that the similarities among languages are more profound than the differences. Languages whose grammars seem completely incompatible may in fact be structurally almost identical, except for a difference in one simple rule. The discovery of these rules and how they may vary promises to yield a linguistic equivalent of the Periodic Table of the Elements: a single framework by which we can understand the fundamental structure of all human language. This is a landmark breakthrough both within linguistics, which will herewith finally become a full-fledged science, and in our understanding of the human mind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rutgers University linguist Baker delivers a milestone in the field of linguistics. In fact, the book goes far in establishing linguistics as a hard science. But before diving into linguistic jargon, Baker engagingly describes the success of the Navajo Code Talkers during WWII; their language proved the one cipher that eluded Japanese cryptographers. While most people would consider words the components of language a lexical rather than a grammatical issue Baker explores the "parametric theory" posited by, among others, Noam Chomsky, which cites grammatical structure or "parameters as the atoms of linguistic diversity." Many linguists find these parameters "recipes" for how words are put together to form meaning a satisfactory explanation for both the similarities and the differences between languages of completely different origins. English and Edo (West African), for example, are grammatically closer than English and French. Baker and others do not believe that word-order formulae stem from either cultural factors or "the survival dynamics of evolutionary biology." He doesn't, however, deny the cultural implications of language: numerous parameters prevented Napoleonic French, for example, from dominating Europe. Certain issues have weak explanations, such as the reasons that various Latinate languages developed divergent parameters. The concluding, somewhat indirect discussion of "hints of what parameters are related to" feels like a push for page count. Though Baker's comparison between linguistics and chemistry i.e., between the detection of grammatical "recipes" and chemists' long struggle to establish the periodic table may seem extreme to some, his clarification of complicated linguistics theories is more accessible than most. Sadly, few Americans care about word order (even in English), so this significant book may only get attention from specialists and libraries.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The Atoms of Language is a welcome introduction to what many linguists are actually engaged in every day." -- John McWhorter, Books & Culture

"A milestone in the field of linguistics." -- Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (October 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465005225
• ISBN-13: 978-0465005222
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, but not for everyone, May 25, 2004

By 

"swingpit" (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar (Paperback)

The Principle and Parameters approach in linguistics is one of Chomsky's most profound theoretical insights, and its elegance and depth in explaining linguistic phenomena across languages is one of the most impressive achievements in linguistics. Baker's book is the best popular introduction to the approach that I have read. It is not as fun and entertaining as Pinker, but it is certainly as understandable, and it does not "dumb down" quite as much as Pinker. The book is a quick read, and contains an impressive chapter on Mohawk. Baker takes the theoretical approaches that he introduces earlier in the book, applies it to the case of Mohawk, formulates a novel explanation, and shows how we can get a deep understanding of the structure of Mohawk from a few, easily understood and elegant principles.

All in all, the book is an excellent introduction to how linguistics is done, and the models through which linguists currently think about languages and linguistic phenomena. It gives the best, most understandable explanation of central theoretical concepts such as "parameter" and "I-language" that I have seen, and gives a brief overview of "optimality theory" and other hypotheses in competition to Chomsky's version of P&P.

There is much to learn from this book, but I think that only those with a genuine interest in and sympathy to generative linguistics will find this book illuminating. To appreciate the depth and insight of the Principles and Parameters approach, you need some mastery of the technicalities and constructions, and mastery of the technicalities requires patience. To understand the problems and solutions that arise, you have to be willing to sit, think, and go over words and sentences in exotic languages slowly, including their inflections, affixes, and word order. Baker provides enough so that anyone can understand them; but you will still need to spend some time on these sections. I recommend this book to educated readers with some competence in linguistics, or to those who have a genuine interest in learning about generative grammar by looking at specific exotic languages.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Excitement of Dry Categorization, September 21, 2003

By 

Jim Allan (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar (Paperback)

The title of the book comes from the realization that the syntax of languages may be composed of true elements, like atoms which can normally combine only in particular ways so that certain kinds of langauges will not occur, or will do so for only for a short time before decomposing into a more stable type of language.

Linguists are still in the process of identifying these atoms and Baker is giving a popular account of the current state of investigation.

Mark C. Baker explains modern attempts to break down and categorize language by its syntax and by binary parameters that work thoughout each language providing rules that people following unconsciously in generating new utterances within any particular language.

He demonstrates that languages can be catagorized according to particular parameters which don't appear to have ANY relationship to the culture of the people speaking the language. For example, in building phrases within phrases most languages consistantly add new elements to phrases to create a larger phrase either always at the begnning of the smaller phrase or always at the end.

This seems to refute beliefs that differences in languages indicate fundamental differences in world views. Factually people of almost identical culture live side by side speaking languages that differ drastically syntactically.

So languages seemingly do NOT vary from each other in unlimited ways. Therefore there MUST be rules about what does and does not NORMALLY happen and presumably rules to the exceptions and to the exceptions to the exceptions.

These rules would be innate in human consciousness and would provide the foundations on which the actual syntax of a languages is based.

Languages can be classified syntactically according to type and sub-type and so forth entirely independantly of any genelogical relationships between them.

Baker's writing is lucid and transparent and he lets his subject matter and the puzzles it presents carry the excitement in the book.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb, exciting book about linguistics and languages, April 17, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Atoms Of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules Of Grammar (Hardcover)

This is a lucid, exciting introduction to the fascinating science of modern linguistics. With a minimum of technical jargon, the author shows us how different the languages of the world look - and how similar they really are. With the periodic table of the elements as a guiding metaphor, the author shows how languages form an intricate pattern, and lets us in on some of the discoveries he and other linguists have made about this pattern. The book teaches us about languages as exotic as Mohawk, and left me (at least) quite impressed with the wonders of the human mind. Some of the material towards the end of the book is less impressive, as the author speculates about what it all means, but by then the reader is well and truly hooked anyway, so the flaw is minor.