How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention

by Daniel L. Everett

Conversations are the apex of linguistic studies and sources of insight particularly because they are potentially open-ended in meaning and form. They are also crucial to understanding the nature of language because of their ‘underdeterminacy’ – saying less than what is intended to be communicated and leaving the unspoken assumptions to be figured out by the hearer in some way. Underdeterminacy has always been part of language.