This book is the one that got me interested in writing systems as a part of linguistics. If you teach reading or language, the linguistic background this book provides will inform your professional knowledge far more than you can ever imagine. There are basically three kinds of writing systems in use in the world today: alphabetic, syllabic and logographic. Sampson gives sufficient historical background to help you understand how, where and with what languages these types developed. You will find out why the term 'ideograph' does not really accurately refer to any writing system in use. You'll learn how Egyptian hieroglyphs actually worked. And you'll be surprised to find out how reading Japanese is somewhat similar to reading ENGLISH!

This book is in itself an education in linguistic background knowledge that non-linguists don't usually have, but don't worry, Sampson is such a clear writer and excellent teacher, that the non-specialist can usually follow the discussion without stopping.

If you have an interest in language and languages for personal or professional reasons, this book will greatly enrich your life.

A perfect companion volume is the more recent but equally wonderful, 'Story of Writing'by Andrew Robinson (who is book review editor for the Times Higher Education Supplement).

This, years ago, was just about the first book I read on a linguistic topic, and it's still my favorite. It covers writing systems, using such various interesting cases as Korean, Chinese, and Modern Hebrew. I know of no single book that covers so well such a large (and important) aspect of linguistics as this book, nor does it no intelligently. Plus it's fun.

This book does use linguistic terminology, but is totally accessible to non-linguists.

This book is great for reading on one's own, or could be useful as reading in a linguistics course. It should also be required reading for anyone interested in internationalization of software and any other kind of text processing that could involve non-Roman scripts.

From the title, you would think that this book was an overview of different schools of current linguistic thought, and that would be partially true. However, there's also some treatment of the history of linguistics, starting with the historical linguists of the 19th century.

This is an incredibly readable book--lively and well-written, so much so that for a week I skipped my lunchtime novel and read this, instead.

I found two more or less separate threads in the book. One is an insightful treatment of pre-Chomskyan linguistics, with a chapter each on 19th-century historical linguistics, Saussure, the American descriptivists, and (primarily) European functionalists. The second thread has to do with Chomskyan and other approaches to linguistics as of the late 70's/early 80's. Some parts of this second thread are as screamingly funny as the elements of the first thread are insightful; I don't think that "funny" is normally a word that you would associate with a critique of classical generative grammar, but indeed I was rolling as I read it. To be clear--I mean "funny" not in the sense of being laughable, but rather humorous--it's really quite entertaining. His analysis of the sins of rationalism as applied to questions in language acquisition is absolutely devastating. Hopefully Sampson's description of the Chomskyan community is no longer accurate; I can't recall ever meeting a linguist as stupid as he paints (at least the early) TGists as being, and sometimes wasn't sure that his description of their theoretical excesses was not meant to be hyperbole or a caricature. In any case, it's tremendously enjoyable to read. And, Sampson certainly does point out both the things that TG is good for, and the weak points of the theories that he *does* approve of.

All in all, a great book--I'd love to see an updated version.

Poorly researched, poorly argued, and poorly written, this book does not repay the effort required to read it.

Sampson's attack on Pinker's "The Language Instinct" is, sadly for him, that of an intellectual lightweight criticizing something he doesn't understand.

Pinker has shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, that our language capacity is indeed instinctual. Sampson has shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he doesn't like that fact.

However, saying you don't like something is not the same as proving that it doesn't exist. Sampson does the former well, and falls flat on his face in attempting the latter.

Whether we like it or not, the current evidence is that the world is round and our language capabilities are instinctual. Flat-earthers such as Sampson are entitled to their opinions, I suppose, but I wish they wouldn't burden normal people by putting them in print.

There are other works of fiction that are far more entertaining than this one. Instead of paying money for this book, read it in a library. Then you can laugh all the way to a bookstore to buy something worth having been printed.

'Nativism' holds that we are genetically predisposed to learn language systems with specific properties (nouns, verbs, tenses, tree structure...), and we learn other sorts of languages (e.g., computer languages, mathematical languages) only with great difficulty. 'Empiricism' says the mind is a 'blank slate,' so languages and language acquisition are purely cultural matters. Among the leading nativists (who dominate the discipline of linguistics) are Chomsky, Pinker, Bickerton, and Jackendorff. Sampson's book is dedicated to showing they are wrong.

Sampson is a confident and vigorous writer. He aims a barrage of criticism against nativism, most of which I found less than convincing. Moreover, he offers as an alternative not a linguistic theory, but a general philosophical approach, which he associates with Karl Popper. In my view, philosophy has its place in the world, but the philosophy of science is not an alternative to science. Therefore, Sampson provides no alternative, except that people 'learn by trial and error.' Thanks!

Here are some facts that support nativism: (a) all languages of the world have approximately the same complexity and share strong underlying structural commonalities; (b) children learn their native language very rapidly, and without being taught, whereas they learn other things (e.g., math, science, the arts, natural lore) relatively slowly and almost always with intensive instruction; (c) individuals raised without a native language never learn to speak fluently, later in life, when they encounter language;(d) isolated groups create their own languages (creoles) that are much like existing languages; (e) people with brain damage often lose extremely specific capacities--e.g., to name fruits, or form plurals.

This whole area of study is fraught with ambiguity, because we simply don't know how the brain processes language. Nativists appear to believe there are dedicated, hard-wired modules that efficiently process language, whereas neuroscientists do not find such modules, or believe such modules are the end-product of learning and development, not their starting-point. So there's a lot more to be said on this issue.

I am not a linguist, so I certainly admit that I may be in dire need of an education in this area. But at this point, I stand with the Nativists.