Learnability and Cognition, new edition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change)

Pinker, Steven

ISBN 10: 0262518406 / ISBN 13: 9780262518406

Editore: MIT Press, 2013

Riguardo questo articolo

*FREE domestic shipping until Tuesday, May 20* 508 pp., paperback, previous owner's name neatly inked to the title page, else fine. - If you are reading this, this item is actually (physically) in our stock and ready for shipment once ordered. We are not bookjackers. Buyer is responsible for any additional duties, taxes, or fees required by recipient's country. Codice articolo ZB1316472

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: Learnability and Cognition, new edition: The...

Casa editrice: MIT Press

Data di pubblicazione: 2013

Legatura: Brossura

Condizione: Fine

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto:

A classic book about language acquisition and conceptual structure, with a new preface by the author, "The Secret Life of Verbs."

Before Steven Pinker wrote bestsellers on language and human nature, he wrote several technical monographs on language acquisition that have become classics in cognitive science. Learnability and Cognition, first published in 1989, brought together two big topics: how do children learn their mother tongue, and how does the mind represent basic categories of meaning such as space, time, causality, agency, and goals? The stage for this synthesis was set by the fact that when children learn a language, they come to make surprisingly subtle distinctions: pour water into the glass and fill the glass with water sound natural, but pour the glass with water and fill water into the glass sound odd. How can this happen, given that children are not reliably corrected for uttering odd sentences, and they don't just parrot back the correct ones they hear from their parents? Pinker resolves this paradox with a theory of how children acquire the meaning and uses of verbs, and explores that theory's implications for language, thought, and the relationship between them.

As Pinker writes in a new preface, "The Secret Life of Verbs," the phenomena and ideas he explored in this book inspired his 2007 bestseller The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. These technical discussions, he notes, provide insight not just into language acquisition but into literary metaphor, scientific understanding, political discourse, and even the conceptions of sexuality that go into obscenity.