Infinite Gift
Subtitle: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World
By: Charles Yang
Publisher: Scribner
Published: June 27, 2006
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 273
ISBN-13: 9780743237567
Subjects: Language Arts / Linguistics / Literacy; Language Arts & Disciplines; Language; Linguistics; Language Arts & Disciplines / Alphabet; General; Cognitive Psychology; Developmental - Child; Language Acquisition
First sentence: Chromosomes. Sex. Grasshoppers. "Pick me up, Mommy."  This is an odd list, except in the eye of evolution.
Description: A child's very first word is a miraculous sound, the opening note in a lifelong symphony. Most parents never forget the moment. But that first word is soon followed by a second and a third, and by the age of three, children are typically learning ten new words every day and speaking in complete sentences. The process seems effortless, and for children, it is. But how exactly does it happen? How do children learn language? And why is it so much harder to do later in life?

Drawing on cutting-edge developments in biology, neurology, psychology, and linguistics, Charles Yang's The Infinite Gift takes us inside the astonishingly complex but largely subconscious process by which children learn to talk and to understand the spoken word.

Yang illuminates the rich mysteries of language: why French newborns already prefer the sound of French to English; why baby-talk, though often unintelligible, makes perfect linguistic sense; why babies born deaf still babble -- but with their hands; why the grammars of some languages may be evolutionarily stronger than others; and why one of the brain's earliest achievements may in fact be its most complex.

Yang also puts forth an exciting new theory. Building on Noam Chomsky's notion of a universal grammar -- the idea that every human being is born with an intuitive grasp of grammar -- Yang argues that we learn our native languages in part by unlearning the grammars of all the rest.

This means that the next time you hear a child make a grammatical mistake, it may not be a mistake at all; his or her grammar may be perfectly correct in Chinese or Navajo or ancient Greek. This is the brain's way of testing its options as it searches for the local and thus correct grammar -- and then discards all the wrong ones.

And we humans, Yang shows, are not the only creatures who learn this way. In fact, learning by unlearning may be an ancient evolutionary mechanism that runs throughout the animal kingdom. Thus, babies learn to talk in much the same way that birds learn to sing.

Enlivened by Yang's experiences with his own young son, The Infinite Gift is as charming as it is challenging, as thoughtful as it is thought-provoking. An absorbing read for parents, educators, and anyone who has ever wondered about the origins of that uniquely human gift: our ability to speak and, just as miraculous, to understand one another.
Table of contents: title: The Greatest Intellectual Feat
pagenum: 1
class: part
label: 1; label: 2
pagenum: 11
class: part
title: Mission Improbable; label: 3
pagenum: 33
class: part
title: Silent Rehearsals; title: Wuckoo
pagenum: 51
class: part
label: 4; label: 5
pagenum: 73
class: part
title: Word Factory; title: Colorless Green Ideas
pagenum: 93
class: part
label: 6; label: 7
pagenum: 127
class: part
title: Twenty Questions; label: 8
pagenum: 175
class: part
title: The Superiority of the German Language; title: The Infinite Gift
pagenum: 217
class: part
label: Epilogue; pagenum: 219
class: part
label: Notes; pagenum: 233
class: part
label: Glossary; pagenum: 239
class: part
label: Bibliography; pagenum: 259
class: part
label: Acknowledgments; pagenum: 261
class: part
label: Index