N. J. Enfield

May 15, 2024 | the-tls.co.uk | N. J. Enfield |Philip Seargeant

By what magic can we pool our knowledge and build on it for ever? The answer is language. But language is not only a vehicle for improving knowledge. It can itself be improved. The eighteenth-century anarchist-philosopher William Godwin noticed two kinds of advance that made language special, the first of which was the class of technologies that changed the way language is transmitted.

Mar 5, 2024 | mitpress.mit.edu | N. J. Enfield

A fascinating examination of how we are both played by language and made by language: the science underlying the bugs and features of humankind's greatest invention. Language is said to be humankind's greatest accomplishment. But what is language actually good for? It performs poorly at representing reality. It is a constant source of distraction, misdirection, and overshadowing. In fact, N. J.

Oct 12, 2023 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | N. J. Enfield

1 Introduction Perhaps the most foundational concept in modern linguistics is that of the language system. Because of the way a language “holds together,” as Meillet famously put it, languages have been compared again and again to complex structures like organisms and cities (Frank, 2008), not just figuratively but literally.