Language. A Window On the Mind

by Mark David Ledbetter

What is this thing “language”? And what does the fact of language tell us about its users? Sixty thousand years ago, various humanoid species were scattered across the vast expanses of Africa, Europe, and Asia. They lived pretty much as they always had for over half a million years - one millennium, for them, no different than the previous or the next. Then, within one small and unlikely group on the arid plains of Ethiopia, the final genetic requirements for modern language - and for a brain able to handle modern language - clicked into place. In a flash, a historical eye blink, the Language Users brought forth a cultural and technological blossoming that propelled their once small tribe into the state of comprehension - comprehansion of the world, the past, the future, and themselves. And, since language and intelligence overcame environmental restraints on where they could live, it propelled them into mastery of the world. We’ll look at how language is put together, how it works, how it evolves through grand cycles of change and return, the astonishing miracle of how we learn it as children, the equally astonishing miracle of how we encode multidimensional meaning through a unidimensional flow of intricately subtle sound. We’ll look at the sixty-thousand year history of language, the history and development of auxiliary systems such as writing, the eight-thousand year history of Indo-European languages, and the fifteen hundred year history of English. After all that, my hope is for readers to have a new sense of awe for the accomplishments and potential of each and every one of the Language Users. Second Edition, 2018

487 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 30, 2016