Forget the language instinct—this is the story of how we make up language as we go.

Language is perhaps humanity’s most astonishing capacity—and one that remains poorly understood. In "The Language Game", cognitive scientists Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater show us where generations of scientists seeking the rules of language got it wrong. Language isn’t about hardwired grammars but about near-total freedom, something like a game of charades, with the only requirement being a desire to understand and be understood. From this new vantage point, Christiansen and Chater find compelling solutions to major mysteries like the origins of languages and how language learning is possible, and to long-running debates such as whether having two words for “blue” changes what we see. In the end, they show that the only real constraint on communication is our imagination. 

Morten H. Christiansen is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology at Cornell University, Professor in Cognitive Science of Language at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark, and Senior Scientist at the Haskins Labs. He was awarded the Cognitive Psychology Section Award from the British Psychological Society in 2013 and a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 2006. He was elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in 2009, made Fellow of the Psychonomic Society in 2013, elected Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society in 2017 and elected as a foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 2021. He lives with his family in New York.

Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. He has won four national awards for psychological research, and has served as Associate Editor for the journals Cognitive Science, Psychological Review, and Psychological Science. He was elected Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society in 2010, Fellow of the British Academy in 2012, and Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in 2014. Nick advises the UK Government, and co-founded Decision Technology, a consultancy applying psychology to business. Nick was resident scientist and co-creator of Radio 4's, The Human Zoo.