I speak, therefore I am : seventeen thoughts about language
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Bibliographic Information
I speak, therefore I am : seventeen thoughts about language
Columbia University Press, c2016
- : pbk
- Other Title
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Parlo dungue sono
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Note
"Translated from Italian : Parlo dungue sono, 2012"--t.p verso
Includes bibliographical references (p. [77]-84)
Description and Table of Contents
Description
There are no men so dull and stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words, and thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood...On the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect or happily circumstanced which can do the like.-Descartes Language is more like a snowflake than a giraffe's neck. Its specific properties are determined by laws of nature, they have not developed through the accumulation of historical accidents.-Noam Chomsky In I Speak, Therefore I Am, the Italian linguist and neuroscientist Andrea Moro composes an album of his favorite quotations from the history of linguistics, beginning with the Book of Genesis and the power of naming and concluding with Noam Chomsky's metaphor that language is a snowflake. Moro's seventeen linguistic thoughts and his commentary on them display the humanness of language: our need to name and interpret this world and create imaginary ones, to express and understand ourselves. This book is sure to delight anyone who enjoys the ineffable paradox that is human language.
Table of Contents
Preface: Choice, Then Order, Then Chance, Finally Only Light 1. God 2. Plato 3. Aristotle 4. Marcus Terentius Varro 5. Roger Bacon 6. Descartes 7. Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot 8. Sir William Jones 9. Hermann Osthoff and E. Karl Brugmann 10. Ferdinand de Saussure 11. Bertrand Russell 12. Martin Joos 13. Roman Jakobson 14. Joseph Greenberg 15. Eric H. Lenneberg 16. Niels Jerne 17. Noam Chomsky Finale Postscript Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography
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