About this item
Two distinguished linguists on language, the history of science, misplaced euphoria, surprising facts, and potentially permanent mysteries.In The Secrets of Words, influential linguist Noam Chomsky and his longtime colleague Andrea Moro have a wide-ranging conversation, touching on such topics as language and linguistics, the history of science, and the relation between language and the brain. Moro draws Chomsky out on today's misplaced euphoria about artificial intelligence (Chomsky sees "lots of hype and propaganda" coming from Silicon Valley) , the study of the brain (Chomsky points out that findings from brain studies in the 1950s never made it into that era's psychology) , and language acquisition by children. Chomsky in turn invites Moro to describe his own experiments, which proved that there exist impossible languages for the brain, languages that show surprising properties and reveal unexpected secrets of the human mind.
About the Author
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.Photo by Duncan Rawlinson [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ], via Wikimedia Commons.
