Language. A Window On the Mind Quotes

“Beyond a limited use of good ole vocab and grammar texts to give the students a base, textbooks of any kind just don’t have much value. Their main functions are to give the teacher something teacherly to do in class, organize the course so that a sense of structure can be imparted to the students, and provide content for exams.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, Language. A Window On the Mind

“There is never any confusion among competent speakers of English over whether who is subject or object. For example, consider the following questions: Who bit the dog? Who did the dog bite? Understanding is instantaneous and perfect whether you use whom or not. So, if whom is not natural and not needed, why do prescriptive grammarians insist we have to use it? Their reasoning is, in essence: we have to use it because we have to use it. They actually have no other reason.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, Language. A Window On the Mind

“There are some 170 languages in the Philippines, almost all part of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family. I would assume most of the 170 are focal points within a language continuum. Tagalog was the name given to the focal point spoken in the Manila area.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, Language. A Window On the Mind

“Six thousand years ago, there were no fully developed writing systems at all though there were, maybe, twenty thousand fully developed languages. (Yes, there were many more languages then than now.)”
― Mark David Ledbetter, Language. A Window On the Mind

“Just like money, we take writing for granted. Everybody reads and writes. No big deal. Actually, though, only a few hundred of the six thousand languages of the world have a commonly used writing system. A”
― Mark David Ledbetter, Language. A Window On the Mind

“Japanese verbs, for example, are agglutinative. The word ikasetakunakatta can fairly easily be divided into the five pieces – go-cause-want-not-past – that determine its meaning (“did not want to let [someone] go”). Only the first piece is clearly part of an actual independent word, but all five pieces are meaningful units, i.e. morphemes. You”
― Mark David Ledbetter, Language. A Window On the Mind

“And of all those English words, the most dominant, the most powerful, the most amazing has to be... Okay. As a language person, with interest in all language and direct contact with many, including some quite obscure languages, I have yet to discover a language that has not taken “okay” for itself.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, Language. A Window On the Mind