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. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-3 de 36
... person's linguistic ability . It certainly seems tied , at least in part , to the richness of the linguistic environment one is exposed to early on , as Carol noted when we met in New York . " To have an idea of the other person's mind ...
... person singular starting point ( “ I ” ) to a second - person singular endpoint ( “ you ” ) . If , however , I want to sign " You help me , " the direction of the movement is reversed . help is made with the same handshape , but this ...
... person and number through its movement , it is unnecessary to sign the pronouns " I " and " you " separately . As it ... person sin- gular subject . The same is true for most Western languages : Latin Amo ( " I love , " encoding a first ...
Contenido
Introduction | 1 |
In the Village of the Deaf | 5 |
What Is This Wonderful Language? | 15 |
Derechos de autor | |
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