Table Of ContentOUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
LANGUAGE UNLIMITED
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
3
GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP,
UnitedKingdom
OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford.
ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship,
andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof
OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries
©DavidAdger2019
Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted
FirstEditionpublishedin2019
Impression:1
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin
aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe
priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted
bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics
rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe
aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe
addressabove
Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform
andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer
PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress
198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
Dataavailable
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2019939545
ISBN978–0–19–882809–9
PrintedandboundinGreatBritainby
ClaysLtd,ElcografS.p.A.
LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand
forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials
containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork.
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
CONTENTS
Preface vi
1. Creatinglanguage 1
2. Beyondsymbolsandsignals 17
3. Asenseofstructure 43
4. ThequestionofPsammetichus 61
5. Impossiblepatterns 97
6. Allinthemind 129
7. ALawofLanguage 159
8. Botlang 189
9. Merge 209
10. Grammarandculture 231
Notes 253
Acknowledgments 261
Index 262
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
PREFACE
MyfascinationforlanguageappearedwhenIwasaboutten
years old. I’d been reading Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of
Earthsea, still one of my favourite books. In it, our hero Ged, is
sent to a windy isolated tower on Roke, an island in the centre
of Le Guin’s world of Earthsea. The tower is the home of the
Master Namer, Kurremkarmerruk, who teaches the core of the
magicalsystemofEarthsea:thetruenamesofthings.There,Ged
learnsnameaftername.Eachplantandallitsleaves,sepals,and
stamens, each animal, and all their scales, feathers, and fangs.
Kurremkarmerruk teaches his students that to work magic on
something,youneedtoknowthenameofnotjustthatthing,but
allofitspartsandtheirparts.Toenchantthesea,Gedneededto
know not just the name of the sea, but also the names of each
gully and inlet, each reef and trench, each whirlpool, channel,
shallows,andswell,downtothenameofthefoamthatappears
momentarilyonawave.
Ifoundthisthoughtfascinatingevenattheageoften.Ididn’t
reallyunderstandit,becauseitisparadoxical.Howinfinitesimal
do you need to go before there are no more names? How par-
ticular do you need to be? A wave on the sea appears once, for
a moment in time, and the foam on that wave is unique and
fleeting. No language could have all the words to name every
iotaofexistence.Howcouldalanguagecapturethenumberless
thingsandunendingpossibilitiesoftheworld?
Iwascaptivatedbythisquestion.AndIstillam.Foralthough
Le Guin’s Language of Making is mythical, human language
does, in fact, have this almost mystical power. It can describe
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
PREFACE · vii
theinfiniteparticularityoftheworldasweperceiveit.Language
doesn’t do this through words, giving a unique name to each
individualthing.Itdoesitthroughsentences,throughthepower
tocombinewords,whatlinguistscallsyntax.Syntaxiswherethe
magichappens.Ittakesthewordsweusetosliceupourreality,
andputsthemtogetherininfinitelyvariedways.Itallowsmeto
talkaboutthefoamIsawonawave,thefirstonethattickledmy
baretoesonabeachinWemyss,inFife,onmytenthbirthday.It
gaveLeGuinthepowertoputKurremkarmerruk’sIsolateTower
intothemind’seyeofthatsametenyearold.Itbothcapturesthe
worldasitis,andgivesusthepowertocreatenewworlds.
Inthisbook,Iexplainhowsyntaxgiveslanguageitsinfinitely
creative power. The book is a dip into the sea of the syntax of
human language. It is no more than a skimming of the foam
on a single wave, but I hope it gives an idea of how important
understandingsyntaxistothebroaderprojectofunderstanding
humanlanguage.
DavidAdger
London
October2018
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF – FINAL,24/6/2019,SPi
1
CREATING LANGUAGE
Iwanttobeginthisbookbyaskingyoutomakeupasentence.
It should be more than a few words long. Make one up that,
say,spansatleastonelineonthepage.Nowgotoyourfavourite
searchengineandputinthesentenceyou’vemadeup,ininverted
commas,sothatthesearchenginelooksforanexactmatch.Now
hitreturn.
Question:doesyoursentenceexistanywhereelseontheinter-
net?I’vetriedthismanytimesandeachtime,theanswerisno.I’m
guessingthatthatwasyourexperiencetoo.Thisisn’tjustaside
effectofusingtheinterneteither.TheBritishNationalCorpusis
anonlinecollectionoftexts,somefromnewspapers,somethat
have been transcribed from real conversations between people
speakingEnglish.Thereareover100millionwordsinthiscollec-
tion. I took the following sentence from the corpus at random,
andsearchedforitagain,toseeifitappearedelsewhereinthemil-
lionsofsentencesinthecorpus.IthendidthesameonGoogle.
It’samazinghowmanypeopleleaveoutoneormoreofthoseessential
details.
Therearenootherexamples.Itseemscrazy,butsentencesalmost
neverreoccur.
