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Product Description
Product Description
'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
From the Publisher
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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First Sentence
As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 46 people found the following review helpful
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.
110 of 122 people found the following review helpful
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).
18 of 22 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
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 13 months ago by CMP3010
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 16 months ago by Ash
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 22 months ago by Sontee
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
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
Persuavily written falsehoods
Pinker writes extremely well, and makes a persuasive argument for a nativist perspective of language acquisition. Read more
Published on 14 Oct 2009 by Duncan Robertson
Very good in parts, though also too dry and technical elsewhere
It took me 7 weeks to get through this - very interesting in parts, esp. the last quarter which I got through in two or three days, but very dry and technical in others, where I... Read more
Published on 18 July 2009 by John Hopper
An interesting read, but basically wrong
Pinker has something interesting things to say on the subject, but forgets to say the the 'language instinct' (Chomsky's 'universal grammar') is not accepted as correct by a great... Read more
Published on 22 Mar 2009 by J. Clarke
Cool . . . . but wrong
I first read this book ten years ago when I started teaching English in various parts of the world. I thought it a wonder. We are hard-wired for grammar; it must be true. Read more
Published on 10 Dec 2007 by Geoffrey Cockayne
The Bookselling Instinct
Begin with a title that asserts the conclusion.
Start the book by aligning the author with Chomsky in postulating an innate, universal grammar capacity. Read more
Start the book by aligning the author with Chomsky in postulating an innate, universal grammar capacity. Read more
Published on 25 Oct 2007 by calmly
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