Discover words to surprise, delight, and enamor. Learn terms for the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees, for dancing awkwardly but with relish, and for the look shared by two people who each wish the other would speak first. Mak loves words, and her brief compilation of words will surprise, delight, and enamor. Do you practice Tsundoku? It is a Japanese noun for the letting books pile up unread after your buy them. Or perhaps you Balter....

"A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review

The classic work on the development of human language by the world's leading expert on language and the mind

In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes

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The search for the origin of human language has finally come of age. For centuries, progress in Ur-language research was slow and spasmodic; many scientists came to believe that there was no definitive way to answer its central questions. Then, in the past 20 years, everything changed. Linguist Kenneally shows how linguists, cognitive scientists, animal researchers, biologists, and geneticists have all contributed valuable new insights into language...

When Max cuts out words from magazines and newspapers, collecting them the way his brothers collect stamps and coins, they all learn about words, sentences, and storytelling

"Everyone likes to think they know a bit about language: There are some words that you simply can't translate into English. The origin of a word tells you how it should be used. A dialect is inferior to a language. The problem is, none of these statements are true. In Don't Believe a Word, linguist David Shariatmadari explodes nine common myths about language and introduces us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics. By the end of...

"If you are not already a Steven Pinker addict, this book will make you one." -- Jared Diamond In Words and Rules, Steven Pinker explores profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple phenomenon -- regular and irregular verbs -- and examining it from every angle. With humor and verve, he covers an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities, from the history of languages to how to simulate languages on computers to...

With the peculiar Mrs. Kormel at the wheel, anything could happen on the bus ride to Ella Mentry School, as A.J. and his friends find out on the day they have to go out of their way to pick up "the nude kid."

Best-selling author Umberto Eco's latest work unlocks the riddles of history in an exploration of the "linguistics of the lunatic," stories told by scholars, scientists, poets, fanatics, and ordinary people in order to make sense of the world. Exploring the "Force of the False," Eco uncovers layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, such as Columbus's assumption that the world was much smaller than it is, leading him to seek out a quick route...