Natural Causes of Language: Frames, Biases, and Cultural Transmission

This book contains a preface followed by five chapters and a conclusion. The preface outlines the scope of discussion and helps the reader to decide if he or she wants to continue reading. As a quick summary, the book answers the question how a language got to be what it is at present. Beyond the confines of words and sentences, interested readers are led to think about language as a larger system of human communication with several explicatory mechanisms. The book suggests a confluence of relationships and cultural connections operating in a speech community that lead to the fostering, propagating, and retaining of items in a language relevant to current communication. The operand underpinning the growth of language includes frames, biases and transmission. In specific details, Enfield spells out clearly that his work offers three main points with regard to understanding the natural causes of linguistic systems. Firstly, the causal processes in linguistic reality apply in multiple frames or time scales. Secondly, for language and the rest of culture to exist, its constituent parts must be diffused and remains in circulation within the speakers’ social histories. Thirdly, the socially circulating language and cultural elements are embedded within larger systems. According to Enfield, the third point is underappreciated. The book argues that a language cannot be understood as a complete system devoid of the speakers that represent the speech community of the language. In other words, whenever a phrase or a series of word is put to academic scrutiny, we are always dealing with a portion of linguistic elements or meanings activated in a particular context of language use. On this matter, we are reminded by Enfield that: