Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals about the MindSimon & Schuster, 2007 - 354 páginas Imagine a village where everyone "speaks" sign language. Just such a village -- an isolated Bedouin community in Israel with an unusually high rate of deafness -- is at the heart of "Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind." There, an indigenous sign language has sprung up, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike. It is a language no outsider has been able to decode, until now. A "New York Times" reporter trained as a linguist, Margalit Fox is the only Western journalist to have set foot in this remarkable village. In "Talking Hands, " she follows an international team of scientists that is unraveling this mysterious language. Because the sign language of the village has arisen completely on its own, outside the influence of any other language, it is a living demonstration of the "language instinct," man's inborn capacity to create language. If the researchers can decode this language, they will have helped isolate ingredients essential to all human language, signed and spoken. But as "Talking Hands" grippingly shows, their work in the village is also a race against time, because the unique language of the village may already be endangered. "Talking Hands" offers a fascinating introduction to the signed languages of the world -- languages as beautiful, vital and emphatically human as any other -- explaining why they are now furnishing cognitive scientists with long-sought keys to understanding how language works in the mind. Written in lyrical, accessible prose, "Talking Hands" will captivate anyone interested in language, the human mind and journeys to exotic places. |
No interior do livro
Resultados 1-3 de 34
... encode grammar . In these languages , families of related words share the same phonological " root , " usually a group of three consonants . Changes in meaning are encoded by plugging different vowels into this consonantal template . In ...
... encode locative information ; and plain verbs , which encode neither - has been found in every signed language that has verb agreement . Irit noticed something else about agreeing verbs that was strik- ingly systematic . It had to do ...
... encoded an essential piece of linguistic information : the " whom " of who - does - what - to - whom . In all known ... encode the same information with suffixes . Irit also examined the curious case of backwards verbs . Like ordi- nary ...
Índice
Introduction | 1 |
In the Village of the Deaf | 5 |
What Is This Wonderful Language? | 15 |
Direitos de autor | |
14 outras secções não apresentadas
Outras edições - Ver tudo
Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind Margalit Fox Pré-visualização limitada - 2008 |