Tags
book review, constructionist, language, Language acquisition, language faculty, language organ, Linguistics, Michael Tomasello, Noam Chomsky, Social Sciences, Steven Pinker, universal grammar
This post is a bit of an exception.; I don’t generally plan to post book reviews, but I really enjoyed Michael Tomasello’s Constructing A Language and I’m hoping that this will be an informative post rather than just a review. It’s also a good opportunity for me to start writing about language, which is something I’d like to do even though it’s not my area of expertise. In addition to being a well-written book on its own merits, Constructing A Language really struck me because it successfully challenged what I thought I knew about language acquisition and made me reconsider my position, which is always a remarkable and rewarding experience. This book gave me the wonderful gift of educating me out of my complacent acceptance of an idea and forcing me to really think about it.
