'Dazzling...Pinker's big idea is that language is an instinct...as innate to us as flying is to geese...Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations' - Independent 'A marvellously readable book...illuminates every facet of human language: its biological origin, its uniqueness to humanity, it acquisition by children, its grammatical structure, the production and perception of speech, the pathology of language disorders and the unstoppable evolution of languages and dialects' - Nature
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"A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book.""-- New York Times Book Review""An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written.""-- Noam Chomsky""A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book.""-- New York Times Book Review""An excellent book full of wit and wisdom and sound judgement.""-- Boston Globe Book Review""An exciting book, certain to produce argument.""-- Atlantic Monthly""Somebody finally got it right. Pinker's thoroughly modern, totally engaging book introduces lay readers to the science of language in ways that are irreverant and hilarious while coherent and factually sound."-- Leila Gleitman, University of Pennsylvania, President, Linguistic Society of America"A brilliant piece of work.""-- Mind and Language""Extremely important.""-- New Scientist"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Science Is...
According to Steven PInker, science is an institution that fosters the instinct to make sense of the world while discouraging the instinct to deceive ourselves and one another. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
According to Steven PInker, science is an institution that fosters the instinct to make sense of the world while discouraging the instinct to deceive ourselves and one another. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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118 of 130 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is certainly well-written and very stimulating, but readers new to the subject should be aware that it is highly polemical, and not at all a neutral dispassionate introduction to the field. The book is written from a strongly Chomskyan perspective - indeed the constant worshipful references to the Great Man become tedious after a while, and the many shortcomings of Chomsky's Transformational/Generative Grammar theory are not mentioned. It is one thing to argue - as Pinker does, convincingly - that human beings are born with an innate ability to deduce the grammatical rules of any language from a limited input. It is another to claim that there exists a Universal Grammar which applies to any language (this is not proven in the book), and it is another still to claim that Chomsky's grammar (which hardly works for English let alone any other language) is that Universal Grammar. The book contains some basic linguistic mistakes, which make one question the real expertise of the author (who is a cognitive psychologist, not a linguist). Just one example: to claim (p127) that in an agglutinative language eight morphemes can be combined in half a million different ways is ridiculous, supposing as it does that they can be combined in any order (in fact each morpheme has to go into a particular "slot" in the word). Nevertheless, a stimulating read - inspiring on one page, infuriating on the next. But please don't take it as Holy Writ (especially the Chomskyan bits).
48 of 53 people found the following review helpful
By Peter Reeve
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
Addressing as it does issues of cognition, language usage and acquisition, evolutionary biology and innate versus learned behaviour, this work is relevant to many of the great intellectual debates of our time. It is very readable for the most part, although if some of the topics are new to you then you will find a few sections rather heavy going. More illustrations would have helped here. There are syntax structure diagrams and one very grudging, cursory sketch of the language centers of the brain, but many sections cry out for a diagram among all the verbiage.
Pinker's lively, humorous style is often commented on but I sometimes found it wearing. He will illustrate a point with an amusing newspaper cutting, then list a few more, then add "I could not resist some more..." and so on. I sometimes wished he would just get on with it.
A major problem with his nativist approach is that many examples he lists of usages that English speakers would never employ are nothing of the kind. Most of them are conceivable and since the first publication of this book, linguists have been busy recording them in the field. The thesis also becomes somewhat unravelled in the penultimate chapter, where he argues that 'you and I' and 'you and me' are equally correct in all circumstances, because 'the pronoun is free to have any case it wants'. But if this is so then what has become of the innate awareness of correct usage that the whole theory is about? If 'between you and I' sounds instinctively wrong to me and 'between you and me' sounds instinctively wrong to someone else, does that mean one of us has a mutant grammar gene? I doubt it.
The title itself is problematic. 'Instinct' is not a word much in favour among biologists nowadays and whatever language is, it is certainly not instinctive in the traditional sense. Early in the book, Pinker admits as much, but determines to use the word anyway, a use that owes more to marketing than to science.
Still, this is probably the best introductory linguistics text currently available. If you are new to linguistics, start here rather than with Chomsky, but please go on to read Geoffrey Sampson's work, perhaps starting with his website, to get an alternative view. As with most academic disputes, the answer no doubt lies somewhere in the middle. Since Chomsky's early work, the nativists have toned down their claims considerably, while their opponents have made concessions. On page 34 of this book, Pinker says, "No one has yet located a language organ or a grammar gene, but the search is on." More than a decade later, the search is still on. Good luck with that.
23 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Pinker really goes all the way in this, bathing the reader in wonderful language, interesting ideas and good old fun and games. But the sad part is that his premise and conclusion--that language is an instinct--is a total and complete non sequitur.
Being a fan of Chomsky, Pinker submits to the notion (and a notion it is) that language and communication aren't necessarily related (as Chomsky (1975) said, "communication is only one function of language, and by no means an essential one"). Although Chomsky in recent years has done a lot to moderate his position, and a lot of research at least suggest that the world has come out of the post-skinnerian, anti-"blank slate" state in which it was in the seventies, when Chomsky reigned, Pinker upholds the sharp divide between grammar and usage. Why?
Because The Language Instinct isn't really about language. It's about completing Pinker's reductionist trilogy, consisting of this one, The Blank Slate, and How the Mind works. In The Language Instinct, Pinker doesn't analyze the facts and draws a valid conclusion. He simply tells us how convenient to his worldview it would be if language really was an instinct. I believe that makes The Language Instinct theology (or at best, philosophy) and not science.
Still, this book is a fine introduction to chomskyan grammar, X-bars and the like. Plus it's fun. But scientifically, it lacks stringency, humility and honesty. The book is filled with thin case studies that could mean the "instinct hypothesis" is correct or wrong, depending on your interpretation (of course Pinker chooses "correct"), and quote mining (the worst example being one in which Pinker gets the one name he's quoting wrong--twice!--plus, the book he's quoting is really about something else than what Pinker claims. The book in question is Heath (1983), Ways With Words.)
So, this book doesn't really tell us much about language, nor about language acquisition. What it does, however, is to educate us in Pinker's worldview, luckily for us in an entertaining manner. But need you learn of language, you must turn to someone who understands communication. Check out Pinker for laughs and a quick read, but if you want to learn something, I suggest Michael Tomasello, Jerome Bruner or Albert Bandura. They have what Pinker lack: an understanding of how complex human communication really is.
Being a fan of Chomsky, Pinker submits to the notion (and a notion it is) that language and communication aren't necessarily related (as Chomsky (1975) said, "communication is only one function of language, and by no means an essential one"). Although Chomsky in recent years has done a lot to moderate his position, and a lot of research at least suggest that the world has come out of the post-skinnerian, anti-"blank slate" state in which it was in the seventies, when Chomsky reigned, Pinker upholds the sharp divide between grammar and usage. Why?
Because The Language Instinct isn't really about language. It's about completing Pinker's reductionist trilogy, consisting of this one, The Blank Slate, and How the Mind works. In The Language Instinct, Pinker doesn't analyze the facts and draws a valid conclusion. He simply tells us how convenient to his worldview it would be if language really was an instinct. I believe that makes The Language Instinct theology (or at best, philosophy) and not science.
Still, this book is a fine introduction to chomskyan grammar, X-bars and the like. Plus it's fun. But scientifically, it lacks stringency, humility and honesty. The book is filled with thin case studies that could mean the "instinct hypothesis" is correct or wrong, depending on your interpretation (of course Pinker chooses "correct"), and quote mining (the worst example being one in which Pinker gets the one name he's quoting wrong--twice!--plus, the book he's quoting is really about something else than what Pinker claims. The book in question is Heath (1983), Ways With Words.)
So, this book doesn't really tell us much about language, nor about language acquisition. What it does, however, is to educate us in Pinker's worldview, luckily for us in an entertaining manner. But need you learn of language, you must turn to someone who understands communication. Check out Pinker for laughs and a quick read, but if you want to learn something, I suggest Michael Tomasello, Jerome Bruner or Albert Bandura. They have what Pinker lack: an understanding of how complex human communication really is.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book
Fantastic book. Well-suited for the tyro and student alike. The early chapters quickly bring you up to speed with the basis for the book and its arguments. Read more
Published 2 days ago by O. Peatman
4.0 out of 5 stars
accessible and enjoyable
Here is the book that I would really want to have half-stars to rate it with. (Preposition at the end of the sentence, language mavens will catch me!) I would give this book 3. Read more
Published 15 days ago by Judyta Szacillo
2.0 out of 5 stars
Professor Pinker's potentially pointless pontifications prove...
To summate. Blah, blah, BORING, BORING, conjecture, blah. Thinly veiled attack on Chomsky. Blah, blah, unproven hypothesis. Another attack on Chomsky. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Andrew W
5.0 out of 5 stars
Language is an instinct
Groundbreaking. Not only does Pinker propound that language is an instinct but conveys this by a lucid explanation, accessible but scientific. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jane Baker
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mojo
This book will engage many lefty liberals interested in deconstructing society on their terms but beyond that I doubt whether it has much of a market elsewhere. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Nobby
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enlightening and enjoyable, as well as challenging
I believe that it's essential to have a bit of a scientific knowledge regarding this matter as a lot of the terms are quite new. Read more
Published on 17 April 2011 by CMP3010
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very interesting book
This book is for anyone who is interested in the current science on how our brains learn and process language. Its a must read for anyone who is a language aficionado. Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2011 by Ash
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dont buy it
Now, the reason I picked this book up (not that I need to justify it to anyone other than my self) is because I really wanted to know if we are indeed born with a sense of language... Read more
Published on 23 July 2010 by Sontee
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly-recommended
This book ranks alongside "The Selfish Gene" in the small cadre of popular science books I would recommend that every thinking person should read. Read more
Published on 2 May 2010 by Will
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love this book
I read this book years ago and Loved it! It is an easy read, and the humour throughout is a bonus. The case studies are fascinating and the hard theory is paced well and explained. Read more
Published on 29 Mar 2010 by Anna-Lena
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