Click here to Read: A review of Mark C. Baker’s The Atoms of Language: The Mind’s Hidden Rules of Grammar by Michael Holquist.
This book is of particular interest to anyone involved with ‘the talking cure’, because it posits a connection between the way the mind works and the way that language works. A contribution to recent thinking about Universal Grammar, Baker focuses on “parameter theory.” Since this a thorny and highly technical landscape where linguistics contends with both biology and philosophy, we must be grateful that Baker has a gift for lucid exposition. He provides a plausible and clearly articulated account of why grammars from the most diverse languages vary within a surprisingly limited range. Analysts will find this a useful tool in meditating the question of how UG might relate to UC.
Michael Holquist