Forget the language instinct—this is the story of how we make up language as we go Language is perhaps humanity’s most astonishing capacity—and one that remains poorly understood. In The Language Game, cognitive scientists Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater show us where generations of scientists seeking the rules of language got it wrong. Language isn’t about hardwired grammars but about near-total freedom, something like a game of charades, with the only requirement being a desire to understand and be understood. From this new vantage point, Christiansen and Chater find compelling solutions to major mysteries like the origins of languages and how language learning is possible, and to long-running debates such as whether having two words for “blue” changes what we see. In the end, they show that the only real constraint on communication is our imagination.

This book presents Keith Gilyard's most seminal work in one volume, with new and previously published essays on linguistic diversity, cultural identity, critical literacy, writing instruction, literary texts, and popular culture. Essential reading for students and scholars in rhetorical studies, composition studies, applied linguistics, and education.

Over the past few decades, the book series Linguistische Arbeiten [Linguistic Studies], comprising over 500 volumes, has made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic theory both in Germany and internationally. The series will continue to deliver new impulses for research and maintain the central insight of linguistics that progress can only be made in acquiring new knowledge about human languages both synchronically and diachronically by closely combining empirical and theoretical analyses. To this end, we invite submission of high-quality linguistic studies from all the central areas of general linguistics and the linguistics of individual languages which address topical questions, discuss new data and advance the development of linguistic theory.

In this pioneering effort, noted Jewish philosopher Eugene B. Borowitz opens up the rules by which the language-game of aggadic discourse is carried on in the Talmud, the foundational document of rabbinic and all later Judaism. These findings are compared with the aggadah (the realm in which almost all explicit statements about classic Jewish religious belief occur) of some other early rabbinic writings. Two issues drive Borowitz's inquiry: What, if anything, constrains the unprecedented freedom of this realm? and How might one positively characterize the aggadah? Borowitz introduces us to the rabbis not only in their amazing profundity, but also in their unguarded humanity. He concludes with a reflection on how this old Jewish language-game should influence contemporary Jewish thought, and, perhaps, other religious thought as well.

Learning a new language can be very demanding, but it can also be good fun, and in between the hard work of language acquisition there are opportunities for breaks from the regular classroom routine where what has been learned is put to rewarding and practical use. Games Language People Play provides teachers with a variety of language games to make the teaching and learning of a new language an occasion for enjoyable competitiveness. There are 110 games in all, ranging in level from Beginners to Advanced. Each game carries an indication of the language skill or combination of skills being employed -- reading, writing, listening, speaking -- and the optimal group size, from as few as 10 students to games suitable for classes of unlimited size. The game's instructional objective -- for example, vocabulary expansion -- the materials needed, a full description and additional suggestions are all provided, with all that remains being for you and your class to enjoy the wonderfully creative ideas that Jerry Steinberg has put into book form for you. Originally published more than 20 years ago, Games Language People Play has continued to delight teachers and students of English every year since then.