SUMMARY "The Unfolding of Language" provides a thoroughly readable, popular- science sty le discussion of the evolution of language.

Deutscher's central thesis is that t he same processes of destruction and creation which account for attested change in language can also provide an explanation for the origins of linguistic structure. The book consists of a short introduction, seven main chapters, an epilogue, and five short appendices. References to the primary literature reside in a set of notes at the end of the book. The introductory chapter, "This Marvellous Invention", presents the question whi ch the rest of the book attempts to answer: How can we account for the origins o f linguistic structure? Deutscher seeks to explain the structure of language as a consequence of cultural, rather than biological, evolution. The main feature o f this approach is to assume uniformity of process: the most parsimonious assump tion is that processes which result in the creation of linguistic structure in a ttested cases of language change are the same processes which created linguistic structure in the first place. Given this uniformitarian assumption, the bulk of the book (the first six chapters) are dedicated to an enjoyable introduction to language change, with the promise of a return to the question of language origi ns in chapter 7. Chapter 1, "A Castle in the Air", provides some basic background on the structu re of language (word order, hierarchical structure, systems for marking case, t ense and so on), as well as some exceptions to this structure (irregular verbs, arbitrary gender systems). As throughout the book, lots of examples of various k inds of structure and irregularity are provided, from a wide range of languages, including a discussion of the verbal system of the Semitic languages, which rea ppears in later chapters. Chapter 2, "Perpetual Motion", provides an introduction to processes of language change. The chapter begins with a broad look at language change in the Indo-Eur opean languages, with examples from English, French and German. Deutscher then m oves on to briefly discuss the causes of language change (economy, expressivenes s, analogy), setting the scene for the subsequent chapters which look at mechani sms of change in more detail. Chapter 3, "The Forces of Destruction", one of the bulkier chapters, focuses on the role of individual preferences for economy as a cause of "destructive" langu age change. The chapter begins with a simple example of the way in which sound c hange can introduce irregularity into a regular paradigm, goes on to discuss Gri mm's Law (a series of phonological erosions taking place in the Germanic branch of Indo-European), and continues with several pages of examples of the damage si milar economy- motivated changes can wreak on different kinds of linguistic stru cture. There is then a section on semantic bleaching, described as the erosion of meani ng. Finally, Deutscher describes some of the impressive accomplishments of 19th century linguists, achieved as a consequence of their conceptualisation of langu age change as a regular process, culminating in the spectacular confirmation of Saussure's hypothesis on the structure of Proto-Indo-European. Chapter 4 moves on to consider the second cause of language change - the quest f or expressiveness on the part of individual speakers. As suggested by its title, "A Reef of Dead Metaphors", the chapter focuses on metaphor as a means of achie ving expressiveness and an engine of language change. A series of well-chosen ex amples guide the reader from rather obvious metaphorical usages through to "dead metaphors" buried in the history of words such as "barmy", "sarcastic", and the less glamorous "have". The chapter concludes with examples of common cross-ling

uistic patterns of metaphor, including the chain of metaphor from expressions fo r body parts to spatial terms to time to causation. Chapter 5, "The Forces of Creation", signals a shift in focus from destructive c hange to change involving the creation of structure. In a departure from the for mat of the rest of the book, this chapter takes the form of a Socratic dialogue, in the guise of a session at the George Orwell Centenary Conference on the decl ine of the English language (Orwell apparently "could not blow his nose without moralizing on conditions in the handkerchief industry" [p74]). Deutscher uses th is format to present several cases in which gradual processes of phonological an d semantic erosion result in the emergence of new grammatical markers for tense, person and case. Chapter 6 introduces the third and final mechanism of language change - analogy. "Craving for Order" outlines the ways in which analogy-making on the part of la nguage learners introduces a pressure for regular structure in language. The pro cess of analogy is illustrated briefly with an example of back-formation (noun "grot" from adjective "grotty"), before Deutsche r moves on to the role of analogy in the evolution of the Semitic verb. The Semi tic verbal system (consonantonly root, combined with vowel templates specified f or person, number, tense, aspect, etc) was introduced in Chapter 1 as the pinnac le of algebraic perfection in the "design" of linguistic systems. Here Deutscher demonstrates how such heights can be reached through an incremental series of c hanges involving several instances of analogy, as well as the familiar processes of erosion. Chapter 7, the eponymous "The Unfolding of Language", finally returns to the que stion of the origins of linguistic structure. Deutscher sketches a scenario unde r which the processes of change outlined in earlier chapters can take us from a loosely structured protolanguage to a language featuring recursive hierarchical structure, syntactic categories, inflectional markers, pronouns, prepositions, a nd so on. As acknowledged by Deutscher, the precise steps he suggests are largel y irrelevant to the central point: if we make the uniformitarian assumption that the processes operating in the present also operated in the past, we can plausi bly account for the evolution of much of the structure of language purely in ter ms of such processes. Finally, in the epilogue, Deutscher speculates on a possible future linguistics which seeks to unearth the relationship between social and linguistic structure. Starting from the observation that Indo-European languages seem to be on a stea dy trajectory towards morphological simplification, Deutscher suggests that aspects of modern society such as the in creased need to communicate with strangers (favouring simplicity) and widespread literacy (fossilizing word boundaries) may block the cycle back, via fusion, to morphological complexity.