The Big Idea
“It’d be nice if we could all sit down and talk our language."
— Ramona Dick. California. Language: Washoe.
Language - Mankind's greatest invention - was never invented. Language developed instinctively and, although we advance our language every day, we did not start off striving to build a language.
Guy Deutscher is an Israeli linguist who received his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and learned English as a second language. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester and was a professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He has written several articles and books aside from The Unfolding of Language, including its successor: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. In contrast to the traditional study of Language, linguists focuses not on the ideas that are communicated but rather on the linguistic systems that allow this communication to take place.
Deutscher’s central thesis is that the same processes of destruction and creation which account for attested change in language can also provide an explanation for the origins of linguistic structure. Speaking from humanity's point of view and incorporating some of his own insights based on the evidence, he answers the questions that everyone has and gives information discovered by a multitude of people throughout history.
Guy Deutscher is an Israeli linguist who received his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and learned English as a second language. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester and was a professor in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He has written several articles and books aside from The Unfolding of Language, including its successor: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. In contrast to the traditional study of Language, linguists focuses not on the ideas that are communicated but rather on the linguistic systems that allow this communication to take place.
Deutscher’s central thesis is that the same processes of destruction and creation which account for attested change in language can also provide an explanation for the origins of linguistic structure. Speaking from humanity's point of view and incorporating some of his own insights based on the evidence, he answers the questions that everyone has and gives information discovered by a multitude of people throughout history.
Deutscher draws on his own extensive linguistic research as well as groundbreaking discoveries in modern linguistics to tie together the "Doctor Frankenstein method" of developing language from transformed versions of words that were borrowed and the modern "cut-and-paste style" of extending meaning. When a culture comes across something new that they don't have a word for, often they will take a word from the culture that has one. Because of this, most languages are mixes of the original words and words from other languages. Deutscher uses this knowledge to trace back through every structural pattern that can be found in any language in an attempt to answer his own questions.
Whether or not he is right or wrong is trivial in the grand scheme of his book. No one can say for certain because the origins of linguistic structure have not yet been proven. The real significance of his writing is in the journey it takes the reader on through the history of communication, bringing a wealth of insight to each person who reads it, unique to interpretation. Watching the unfolding of language through the pages of this book encourages an understanding about yourself and your culture that you can't get from any resource other than language. If it does prove anything it's that language is irrefutably intertwined in our past, present, and future.
Whether or not he is right or wrong is trivial in the grand scheme of his book. No one can say for certain because the origins of linguistic structure have not yet been proven. The real significance of his writing is in the journey it takes the reader on through the history of communication, bringing a wealth of insight to each person who reads it, unique to interpretation. Watching the unfolding of language through the pages of this book encourages an understanding about yourself and your culture that you can't get from any resource other than language. If it does prove anything it's that language is irrefutably intertwined in our past, present, and future.
At the end, Deutscher states that:
"The idea was to show that from a very simple starting point and with modest raw materials, it is possible, in principle, to understand how the full complexity of language could have arisen. All that is needed are five main ingredients:
(i) A human brain (capable of learning a language, drawing analogies, thinking in terms of metaphor, and so on).
(ii) Human being who wish to communicate with each other for essentially the same purposes as those that motivate us today.
(iii) Words for some simple physical objects and simple actions.
(iv) A few natural principles of ordering, which stem from somewhere very deep in our cognition.
(v) A bit of time."