The Language Game

''Marvellously clear... playfully persuasive'' Richard Dawkins
''Full of Fascinating details. A delight to read.'' Tim Harford
''Highly original and convincing ... a delight to read!'' - Daniel Everett

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

Language is perhaps humanity''s most astonishing accomplishment and one that remains poorly understood.

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 eve