Summary: Language is a social construct. It unites the individuals of a given community through a code that is understood by those who use it, ranging from street slang to the prescribed usage of grammar by an elite. This program examines language in a historical context and as a political tool. Since the advent of the printing press and, most recently, the Internet, English has become the universal...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program travels the globe as it surveys a large portion of the world's languages-25 percent of which are spoken by a mere 0.1 percent of the Earth's population. Moving from Africa to Oceania and up to Asia and then west to Europe and across the ocean to the Americas, the program assesses how many languages are spoken in each region, the characteristics they share, and misconceptions about...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The world is a mosaic of visions, and each vision is encapsulated by a language. Yet every two weeks, one of the world's approximately 6,500 languages dies out. What is the significance of this loss to those who speak the language as well as for the rest of humankind? Why do some languages become global while others disappear? And how are language and identity connected? In this program,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: It is predicted that within a century more than half of the world's languages will become extinct, but as languages are lost, new ones emerge naturally or are constructed. In this program, Noam Chomsky; Esperantist Thomas Eccard; endangered languages researcher Peter Ladefoged, who has since passed away; and others provide insights into the language life cycle. Topics include constructed...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, John McWhorter, author of The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language; Lyle Campbell, of the University of Utah; Brian Joseph, of The Ohio State University; and population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza examine factors that contributed to the diversification and spread of languages, including early migration, the introduction of agriculture, and genes. Language...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Writing is a relative latecomer to the history of language. This program tracks its emergence in Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica and its spread down through the millennia via conquest-usually violent, sometimes benign-and colonization. The creation of creoles and pidgins resulting from the interaction of specific populations is also addressed, and speculation is made about the first things...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Presents lectures (each 30 minutes in length) by John McWhorter, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, based on his courses in Linguistics.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Teaching Co. 2008
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 410 UNDSummary: Why do girls demonstrate greater reading and writing ability than boys? Is the female brain hardwired for faster verbal development? Should men let women do the talking? This program studies language differences between the sexes and explores the possibility that many communication skills are gender-specific. Following two teams of well-educated adults as they undergo a crash course in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Approximately 70,000 years ago, humankind began talking, and hasn't stopped since. In this fascinating program, a diverse group of experts-an evolutionary linguist, a neurologist, a geneticist, a neuropsychologist, a developmental cognitive neuroscientist, and an Oxford professor of communication-discuss the birth, development, and transmission of the mysterious phenomenon called language....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Sims, Nandi
Summary: "What are the variations of the English language? This book takes students across the country to learn about different regional cultures and how they impact the English language we speak"--OCLC.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Rourke 2023
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Juvenile Nonfiction, Call number: J 401 SIMSummary: Was there a "big bang" in human language and cognitive development, or did speech and abstract thought evolve slowly-perhaps across 200,000 years or so? Surveying prehistoric burial sites and other archaeological finds, including what might be the world's oldest work of art, this program attempts to locate the junction of creativity and communication at which human intelligence was born....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Pinker, Steven
Summary: Steve Pinker discusses the idea that language is an instinct, as innate to us as flying is to geese. This book covers the biological origin, acquisition by children and the grammatical structure of human language.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Folio Society 2008
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 401 PINMills, Claudia
Summary: "Sixth grader Betsy is the one who informs her best friend, Lizard, that thousands of the world's languages are currently threatened by extinction; Betsy's mother is a linguistics professor working frantically to study dying languages before they are lost forever. But it is Lizard who, gripped by the magnitude of this loss, challenges Betsy, "What if, instead of WRITING about dying languages,...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Holiday House 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Juvenile Fiction, Call number: J FIC MILSummary: What precisely is language, and how did humans acquire it? In an effort to answer those essential questions, this program journeys back to prehistoric times in search of language's origin. But this is not a passive discussion, as Noam Chomsky; Brown University's Philip Lieberman; Johanna Nichols, of U.C. Berkeley; Stanford University's Merritt Ruhlen; professor of anthropology Richard Klein;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
McWhorter, John H.
Summary: "With more than 6,000 languages spoken around the world, it's no wonder that linguistics, the study of language, has a reputation for being complex and inaccessible. But here's a secret: There's a lot that's quirky and intriguing about how human language works--and much of it is downright fun to learn about. Every day, linguists ponder and try to solve some of the most intriguing scientific,...
Format: sound recording-nonmusical
Publisher / Publication Date: 2013
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Compact Disc Audio Book, Call number: CD 410 MCWSummary: Melvyn Bragg begins the story of English in Holland, finding ancestral echoes in the Frisian dialect. What follows is a chapter on survival as the English language weathers Viking and Norman invasions, vying with and eventually absorbing rival tongues. Lively settings such as village pubs and markets bring home the lasting influence of Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and Old French. The connection...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Amok, "boomerang," "bungalow," "bangle," "dumdum," "plonk," "assassin"-these are some of the many words that have entered English by way of colonial expansion. This program explores how the British Empire in its heyday exported its language around the globe and how different forms of speech and vocabulary, as well as different attitudes to English, developed out of that colonial expansion. Rich...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Chomsky, Noam.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: New Free Press 1998
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 401 CHOPinker, Steven
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: W. Morrow and Co. 1994
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 400 PinkePinker, Steven
Summary: "In Words and Rules, Pinker explains the profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively single phenomenon and examining it from every angle. The phenomenon - regular and irregular verbs - connects an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities: the history of languages; the theories of Noam Chomsky and his critics; the attempts to simulate language using computer...
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Basic Books 1999