I Speak, Therefore I Am - by Andrea Moro (Paperback)

About the Book

We understand our thoughts and ourselves through language, but what is the nature of language?

Book Synopsis

In I Speak, Therefore I Am, the Italian linguist and neuroscientist Andrea Moro composes an album of his favorite quotations from the history of linguistics, beginning with the Book of Genesis and the power of naming and concluding with Noam Chomsky's metaphor that language is a snowflake. Moro's seventeen linguistic thoughts and his commentary on them display the humanness of language: our need to name and interpret this world and create imaginary ones, to express and understand ourselves. This book is sure to delight anyone who enjoys the ineffable paradox that is human language.

Review Quotes

The author manages the considerable feat of making insightful remarks about a wide variety of figures in a very short space.-- "Library Journal"

I Speak, Therefore I Am explores the intriguing connections between linguistics on the one hand and the sciences and philosophy on the other. The book is abundant with entertaining anecdotes of intellectual history that shed light on these connections. Moro plays the role of wise guide, and leads the reader through a remarkable journey.--Robert Frank, Yale University

Combining wide learning, sharp insight, and deft style, these enlightening and intriguing vignettes carry us through the ages to reach considerable understanding of the distinctive linguistic capacity that sets humans apart from the rest of the natural world.--Noam Chomsky, author of What Kind of Creatures Are We?

There is much to find appealing in this pocket-size, readable historical panorama of important thinkers who have pondered the nature of language from the ancient Greeks to the present day. Nobody has drawn out the historical links in the story of language science in this way, and most nonspecialists would learn much from Moro's quite original observations.--Robert C. Berwick, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

About the Author

Andrea Moro is professor of general linguistics at the Scuola Universitaria Superiore (IUSS) in Pavia, Italy. His work has been published in Nature Neuroscience, Linguistic Inquiry, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and his books include The Raising of Predicates (1997), Dynamic Antisymmetry (2000), The Equilibrium of Human Syntax (2012), The Boundaries of Babel (2015), and Impossible Languages (2016).