The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher

This one has been sitting in my reading queue for years and I finally checked it off the list.  It was almost completely different than I expected, but very enlightening nonetheless.

What I thought was a book about linguistics as a tool to track the geographic movements of civilizations around the world was actually a book about how languages have evolved over the millennia.

Deutscher discusses how many erudite scholars have lamented the persistent debasement of language, longing for some golden age of the past when language was supposedly perfect.  I've often read this myself, especially about Latin.

But what he points out is that language has always been in the process of change and that its imperfections are only seen in the present, not recorded in the past.  It is always going through both destruction and creation.

He cites many examples of modern language in the process of such change.  For example, some people use the word dreamed, some use dreamt.  Some say going to, some say gonna.  These are nothing more than words in the process of change.

Deutscher spends much of the book outlining basic principles of change, many that are universal over time across thousands of languages (interestingly, there are about 6,000 languages in use at present).

One basic principle is that of simplicity (or laziness?), the human desire to shorten words as much as possible.  Going to becomes gonna.  Also consider expressiveness, the desire to express yourself in an original style or matter.  This typically results in the joining of two words into one.

One of his most interesting points was that of metaphor.  Deutscher makes the point quite convincingly that virtually all words are metaphor.  Every word begins its life meaning something specific, but gradually over time that original definition becomes lost and the word means something completely different.  Just look at the first sentence of this post...  This book didn't actually SIT in my queue.  And I didn't really CHECK it off my list.  Metaphors are everywhere.

One point that really blew my mind was the connection between space and time.  Although Einstein discovered this connection just over a century ago, language has utilized the connection for millennia.  Once again consider going to and gonna.  They mean the same thing, right?  Not exactly.  Going to refers to space, while gonna refers to time.  I'm going to the mall vs. I'm gonna go tomorrow.  The book is filled with such hidden codes.

Truly a fascinating subject.