The Infinite Gift

Starred review from April 24, 2006
Children may start to speak at a year, but that's hardly the beginning, as Yale linguist and psychologist Yang shows in this engrossing book. Babies recognize the first elements of language before birth, start to babble at three to four months and can memorize and recognize the sounds of words at six to nine months. Yang uses this fascinating progression to explain one of the core theories of contemporary linguistics: Noam Chomsky's universal grammar, that human understanding of language is in the genes. Yang takes the theory a step further in arguing that the keys to acquiring language are not in the learning, but in unlearning: "Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language spoken in a child's environment.... This theory of language takes both nature and nurture into account: nature proposes, and nurture disposes." Yang unfolds this complex argument systematically and with appealing animation, using creative examples—his son's first word, neurological experiments, baseball analogies—to keep the narrative moving. For readers who will never venture into the field to study language acquisition, he reveals that some of the most exciting linguistic experiments are happening much closer to home.