---
product_id: 6379438
title: "The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention"
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# The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention

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The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention [Deutscher, Guy] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention

Review: Great for Conlangers - This book is a great resource if you're a conlanger working on a naturalistic language and you're unsure how to derive or develop a certain feature in your language. Deutscher goes over the historical development of just about every kind of grammatical feature under the sun, and is even honest about when a certain feature has too obscure of a past to explain how it got there. The only gripe that I have, and it's quite a small one, is that he doesn't go over the how and why of changes in word order (but he does talk about how word order affects the positions of relative clauses, adpositions, possessive markers and other grammatical elements). The book is very accessible and written in a way that even non-linguists can understand, not bogged down by so much linguistic jargon. There's also a very impressive chapter on the ways in which the system of triconsonantal roots could've developed in Semitic languages.
Review: Is language being created and destroyed in a constant cycle? - Understandable, readable, but best of all, enjoyable explanation of the destructive and creative forces acting upon language. This book will convey you a "big picture" of how our present languages could have evolved into their present state and is mainly aimed at the interested layperson or at beginner students of linguistics, not for specialists (or maybe for those specialists that would like to read an overview of their science field from a humorful perspective). The destruction of language structures, as well as the creation of new ones is explained with very illustrative examples taken fom a wide variety of languages and from different historic periods. (Other reviewers have already explained the involved forces). Most 20th/21st century linguists believe that the same forces that acted on prehistoric languages should be the same forces at play now, so by observing present (or at least more or less recent) language changes we should be able to understand the forces that shaped our current languages. Creative changes are harder to observe than destructive ones, since it is easier to observe a present irregularity and look for its origin in the past (the action of a destructive force) than to look at something that looks regular now and imagine that sometime in the past it was irregular. Therefore, the only way to observe such creative processes is by noting an irregularity in some old text, which has somehow become regular in the present. This difficulty gave rise to the widespread idea among 19th century experts that language was only decaying. Although linguists have finally managed to observe some creative phenomena, these are not enough to compensate for the erosion that is evident in languages. Maybe written language and the existence of formal "grammar" and "ortography" are hindering or at least slowing down the creative processes. Linguists still do not know if this situation will lead us to a frightening erosion of meaning and structure in language (for example almost all noun cases existing in Proto-Indo-European, Latin and some Germanic languages are disappearing). Personally, I do not believe language will deteriorate to that point, since the very function of language (communicating meanings between individuals) would be threatened. Therefore, maybe we will reach some critical point and afterwards there will be a Cambric explosion of meaning and structure, it's a pity we will probably not witness this.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #77,103 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #69 in General Anthropology #86 in Linguistics Reference #151 in Evolution (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (892) |
| Dimensions  | 6.25 x 0.92 x 9.25 inches |
| Edition  | First Edition |
| ISBN-10  | 0805080120 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0805080124 |
| Item Weight  | 2.31 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 368 pages |
| Publication date  | May 1, 2006 |
| Publisher  | Holt Paperbacks |

## Images

![The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/619RUhFjG2L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great for Conlangers
*by C***S on May 17, 2019*

This book is a great resource if you're a conlanger working on a naturalistic language and you're unsure how to derive or develop a certain feature in your language. Deutscher goes over the historical development of just about every kind of grammatical feature under the sun, and is even honest about when a certain feature has too obscure of a past to explain how it got there. The only gripe that I have, and it's quite a small one, is that he doesn't go over the how and why of changes in word order (but he does talk about how word order affects the positions of relative clauses, adpositions, possessive markers and other grammatical elements). The book is very accessible and written in a way that even non-linguists can understand, not bogged down by so much linguistic jargon. There's also a very impressive chapter on the ways in which the system of triconsonantal roots could've developed in Semitic languages.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Is language being created and destroyed in a constant cycle?
*by A***A on May 21, 2009*

Understandable, readable, but best of all, enjoyable explanation of the destructive and creative forces acting upon language. This book will convey you a "big picture" of how our present languages could have evolved into their present state and is mainly aimed at the interested layperson or at beginner students of linguistics, not for specialists (or maybe for those specialists that would like to read an overview of their science field from a humorful perspective). The destruction of language structures, as well as the creation of new ones is explained with very illustrative examples taken fom a wide variety of languages and from different historic periods. (Other reviewers have already explained the involved forces). Most 20th/21st century linguists believe that the same forces that acted on prehistoric languages should be the same forces at play now, so by observing present (or at least more or less recent) language changes we should be able to understand the forces that shaped our current languages. Creative changes are harder to observe than destructive ones, since it is easier to observe a present irregularity and look for its origin in the past (the action of a destructive force) than to look at something that looks regular now and imagine that sometime in the past it was irregular. Therefore, the only way to observe such creative processes is by noting an irregularity in some old text, which has somehow become regular in the present. This difficulty gave rise to the widespread idea among 19th century experts that language was only decaying. Although linguists have finally managed to observe some creative phenomena, these are not enough to compensate for the erosion that is evident in languages. Maybe written language and the existence of formal "grammar" and "ortography" are hindering or at least slowing down the creative processes. Linguists still do not know if this situation will lead us to a frightening erosion of meaning and structure in language (for example almost all noun cases existing in Proto-Indo-European, Latin and some Germanic languages are disappearing). Personally, I do not believe language will deteriorate to that point, since the very function of language (communicating meanings between individuals) would be threatened. Therefore, maybe we will reach some critical point and afterwards there will be a Cambric explosion of meaning and structure, it's a pity we will probably not witness this.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Creative destruction in philology--brilliantly elaborated
*by S***R on July 6, 2014*

A brilliant solution to the conundrum: why does language so often proceed from more to less complex structure, as one sees in comparing Sanskrit, ancient Greek, or Latin to the derived modern languages? Filled with fascinating and informative examples of the continual and ongoing "degeneration" of language, the author is quite versed in changes in English back to the Anglo-Saxon era, as well as other Indo-European languages. I wish I had known his explanation for the origin of the system of declensions and conjugations when I was studying Latin in high school. My fascination with this question, when I later studied, French, Spanish, and German in college, is what led me to a life-long interest in philology. The author is also a native speaker of modern Hebrew and quite knowledgable in ancient Semitic languages. His explanation of the evolution of the 3-consonant root characteristic of Semitic languages is informative as well as fascinating. The only shortcoming I find is that the thesis is presented without reference to who discovered it. If it is entirely the work of the author, this should be stated; or the contributions of others should be acknowledged. It is not so much a matter of who gets the credit, as to understand the evolution of the concepts. The view he puts forth is undoubtedly quite controversial in academic circles, and one suspects that this is the reason for his omitting this aspect of the subject. Perhaps he drew the lesson from the reception given Merritt Ruhlen, who is often criticized for being overly polemical in his advocacy of Greenberg's work pointing to monogenesis. The reactionary nature of academia when confronted with a new paradigm is well-known, and as bad, or worse, in the field of philology as in any other. The author's work rates 5 stars in my view. I have reduced my review of the product review to 4 stars because of a production defect in two successive copies I received from Amazon. I returned one copy but received a replacement with the same defect-- a small pucker in all the central pages, probably caused by the fingers of the stitcher grasping too tightly. One expects a perfect copy when buying a new book. Although a minor annoyance, it did not affect the readability of the type, and is not noticeable from the outside.

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*Last updated: 2026-03-18*