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The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics)
 
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The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

by Steven Pinker (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 544 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st Perennial Classics Ed edition (30 Nov 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0060958332
  • ISBN-13: 978-0060958336
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.5 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 404,037 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #71 in  Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Psychology & Psychiatry > Comparative Psychology

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  • See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

Review
"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"

Product Description
How did language evolve? How old is language? How do we all know how to speak so effortlessly? Why is structural grammatical language specifically human? In his illuminating book, Steven Pinker attacks these fundamental questions with intense curiosity, energetic wit and clarity. He discusses every facet of human language and uncovers its deepest mysteries. Language, to Pinker, is an instinct, and he cuts through the jargon of the science of linguistics to show us how and why. Complemented by Lalla Ward's superb and eloquent reading, this is an audio book about the power of communication and will enlighten all those curious to understand this human power. 'Dazzling ... Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations' Robert Winder, the Independent 'Pinker debunks with panache, cuts through the confusion of jargon, and tells a mean anecdote. He does for language what David Attenborough does for animals' John Gribbin, the Sunday Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics)
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Customer Reviews

22 Reviews
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3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (22 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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80 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Polemical, stimulating, inspiring, but also infuriating, 6 Jan 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (Penguin Science) (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).
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful and informative, 17 Oct 2000
By M. L. Amanda (France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Language Instinct (Paperback)
This is a book written by an expert for non-experts and experts alike. Entertaining, informative and funny, it really makes you think about why we humans speak and how we use language. Despite a couple of linguisticky (!) explanations, you won't get bogged down in jargon. A must for all lovers of language.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Read it, but read it critically, 2 Oct 2005
By Peter Reeve (Thousand Oaks, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars 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 3 months ago by J. Hall

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but bad
Pinker really goes all the way in this, bathing the reader in wonderful language, interesting ideas and good old fun and games. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Kjetil H. Hogstad

4.0 out of 5 stars 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 19 months ago by Geoffrey Cockayne

1.0 out of 5 stars 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
Published 20 months ago by calmly

2.0 out of 5 stars Elegantly Expressed Claptrap
Steven Pinker lost me as a buyer of his thesis with the very second sentence of his book:

"For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape... Read more
Published on 11 Nov 2006 by Mr. O. Buxton

3.0 out of 5 stars First Year Psychology
I picked this up for a piece of coursework on nature vs nurture in language development. It was perfect! Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2006 by Cee-Gee

4.0 out of 5 stars Good to read...
...even if you are not studying for a course related to linguistics. Pinker's writing is informative and a delight to read. Read more
Published on 19 May 2006 by unity-of-hp

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
As a primary school teacher, I have become very interested in how we learn language. I had heard good reviews about this book, so decided to read it for professional reasons... Read more
Published on 16 May 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing ideas convincingly argued
This is the first book I have read on the subject of psycholinguistics. It was surprisingly easy to understand and very enlightening. Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2004 by Sally-Anne

3.0 out of 5 stars Promises all the answers and then fails to deliver
Pinker is an entertaining and engaging writer and this is by far his best work. His style is relaxed, comic and he has an ability to pluck a salient example from the ether to... Read more
Published on 10 Mar 2003 by Famousdog

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