Media: The Atoms of Language/Article/Books & Culture
| Submitter: |
Suzette Haden Elgin
|
| Submitter Email: | ocls@madisoncounty.net |
| Media Body: |
October 24, 2001 Dear Linguist List, The November/December 2001 issue of _Books & Culture_, pp. 18-19, has a review by John H. McWhorter of Mark C. Baker's _The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar_ (from Basic Books 2001). The review offers examples from a number of languages, discusses the Principles & Parameters model, and raises the question of why, precisely, such things should matter either to the general public or to linguists. McWhorter offers a Gricean comment to the effect that Baker "is not consistently successful in ushering the lay reader into concepts that can be initially rather obscure," but gives the book as a whole at least an A-minus. Suzette Haden Elgin </body> |
| Issue Number: | 12.2661 |
| Date Posted: | October 24, 2001 |
