Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it-or at least similar thoughts. -So it is not a textbook. -Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it. The book deals with the problems of philosophy, and shows, I believe, that the reason why these problems are posed is that the logic of our language is mis-understood. The whole sense...

When Max cuts out words from magazines and newspapers, collecting them the way his brothers collect stamps and coins, they all learn about words, sentences, and storytelling.

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research, to which he has contributed for over half a century. In clear, precise, and nontechnical language, Chomsky elaborates...

Idealistic Fox 8's ability to communicate in "Yuman" cannot save his pack when their den and food supply are destroyed to build a mall, so he writes a letter asking for an explanation of human's cruelty.

Emphasizes that many different languages are spoken in different parts of the world, giving examples from French and German to Arabic and Spanish.

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"-metaphors that can shape...

Discover words to surprise, delight, and enamor. Learn terms for the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees, for dancing awkwardly but with relish, and for the look shared by two people who each wish the other would speak first. Other-Wordly is an irresistible gift for lovers of words and those lost for words alike.

Scott Soames is director of the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. His books include Reference and Description (Princeton), Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volumes 1 and 2 (Princeton), Beyond Rigidity, and Understanding Truth. The two volumes of Philosophical Essays bring together the most important essays written by one of the world's foremost philosophers of language. Scott Soames has selected thirty-one...

Mimi is a writer and when she finds that some of her favorite words for natural things, such as wren, violet, and dandelion, are disappearing she appoints her granddaughter, Brooke, as the keeper of wild words, and shows her how to bring them to life by knowing, appreciating, and using the things they stand for.

Our use of everyday language should be mysterious, but familiarity hides the feeling of mystery. This book is a brief meditation on that mysterious activity. Building language outward from descriptions of the present moment, the meditation moves through our talk about space and time, to the realm of everyday thinking and science. But, language enriches us further-through communities of meaning (morality, art, mysticism) to transcendence (the universe,...