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BASTARD TONGUES

Name: BASTARD TONGUES
Author: Derek Bickerton
ISBN: 978-0-8090-2817-7

A TRAILBLAZING LINGUIST FINDS CLUES TO OUR COMMON HUMANITY IN THE WORLD’S LOWLIEST LANGUAGES

by Derek Bickerton ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2008

Provides some truly educative moments, glazed with a thick icing of self-regard.

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Groundbreaking linguist Bickerton (Language and Species, 1990, etc.) summarizes his career, focusing on his efforts to understand the link between languages commonly called “pidgin” and “Creole.”

Now retired from the University of Hawaii, the author throughout his long career has challenged conventional thinking in scholarly monographs that have significantly altered our understanding of tongues previously characterized as inferior or bastardized. When a dominant, usually white force arrives in an area, sometimes bringing slaves from another part of the world, mutually incomprehensible languages collide. Bickerton demonstrates that the older generations of the indigenous group develop a pidgin version of the dominant group’s language. Their children, on the other hand, create and spread a Creole: a different language featuring complexities of grammar and syntax often unknown in the pidgin. Creoles all over the world appear to be quite similar in their deep structures, causing Bickerton to argue for the presence in all of us of an inherent language-generational capacity he calls a “bioprogram.” (He notes the obvious connections to Noam Chomsky’s theories.) To test his notion, the author has tried to obtain funding for a test on human subjects, with no success so far. In his text, a combination of memoir, treatise and thesis defense, the diction varies widely and wildly from gee-whiz informality to dense professional jargon comprehensible to fellow linguists but numbing for general readers. Bickerton is neither shy nor humble, several times ripping into academics he sees as hidebound pedants who need less sitzfleisch (the capacity for sitting on their butts in libraries) and more of what he possesses—the eagerness to go to bars and listen to actual people talk.

Provides some truly educative moments, glazed with a thick icing of self-regard.

Pub Date: March 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-8090-2817-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.