I finished Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct this afternoon and I thought it was terrific. I never thought I would find grammar and language so fascinating, but Pinker hooked me and I am eager to start the next book, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. The Language Instinct convinced me to ease up on…
I’m 135 pages into The Language Instinct and it is utterly fascinating. The general premise is that humans have an innate ability for language, an internally generated grammar that is entirely separate from words. And yet, while I find myself fascinated, I also find myself at the edge of comprehension. The chapter on syntax was…
Ken Jennings has some amusing things to say on the placement of commas on a Rachel Ray advertisement.
Honda has a commericial with “Mr. Opportunity”, a cartoon character that acts as the spokesperson for a line of it’s cars and SUVs. I don’t mind the cartoon guy. I don’t even mind the cars. What “drives” me to distraction is the copy. In fact, it is a single like of copy: …and the very…