“So is language change progress or degeneration? It is neither, of course. To assert that language change is for the better or worse requires some measure of what "good" or "bad" language is, and th...”

“The true structure of the Welsh grammar will be revealed only when we look at sentences slightly more complicated than its basic VSO pattern. Welsh is no different from the rest of the world: it do...”

“Universal grammar is about what language is: it is to be distinguished from prescriptive grammars, often distilled in newspaper columns, which tell us what language should be. We are all entitled t...”

“Now we have come full circle to the subtitle of this book: children learn by unlearning other languages. Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language s...”

“Is language actually getting better, shorter, and easier? Nowadays we often hear exactly the opposite. Teenager slang is awful, students no longer learn Latin, our children not to mention our pres...”

“Language guardians have often blamed linguists as defenders of bad language: moral and cultural relativism is often tossed in at no extra charge. We as a profession are supposedly promoting the ide...”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”