The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language - Hardcover

Pinker, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688121411 ISBN 13: 9780688121419

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1994

Synopsis

The codirector of the MIT Center for Cognitive Science explains how language works, how it differs from thought, why adults have difficulty learning foreign languages, and why computers cannot learn human language

About this title

About the Author

Steven Pinker is professor and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

A three-year-old toddler is "a grammatical genius"--master of most constructions, obeying adult rules of language. To Pinker, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology psycholinguist, the explanation for this miracle is that language is an instinct, an evolutionary adaptation that is partly "hard-wired" into the brain and partly learned. In this exciting synthesis--an entertaining, totally accessible study that will regale language lovers and challenge professionals in many disciplines--Pinker builds a bridge between "innatists" like MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, who hold that infants are biologically programmed for language, and "social interactionists" who contend that they acquire it largely from the environment. If Pinker is right, the origins of language go much further back than 30,000 years ago (the date most commonly given in textbooks)--perhaps to Homo habilis , who lived 2.5 million years ago, or even eons earlier. Peppered with mind-stretching language exercises, the narrative first unravels how babies learn to talk and how people make sense of speech. Professor and co-director of MIT's Center for Cognitive Science, Pinker demolishes linguistic determinism, which holds that differences among languages cause marked differences in the thoughts of their speakers. He then follows neurolinguists in their quest for language centers in the brain and for genes that might help build brain circuits controlling grammar and speech. Pinker also argues that claims for chimpanzees' acquisition of language (via symbols or American Sign Language) are vastly exaggerated and rest on skimpy data. Finally, he takes delightful swipes at "language mavens" like William Safire and Richard Lederer, accusing them of rigidity and of grossly underestimating the average person's language skills. Pinker's book is a beautiful hymn to the infinite creative potential of language. Newbridge Book Clubs main selection; BOMC and QPB alternates.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Another in a series of books (Joel Davis's Mother Tongue, p. 1303; Ray Jackendorf's Patterns in the Mind, p. 1439) popularizing Chomsky's once controversial theories explaining the biological basis of language. Variously mellow, intense, and bemused--but never boring--Pinker (Director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience/MIT), emphasizes Darwinian theory and defines language as a ``biological adaptation to communicate.'' While Pinker bases his argument on the innate nature of language, he situates language in that transitional area between instinct and learned behavior, between nature and culture. Starting with what he calls a ``grammar gene,'' Pinker describes the way primitives, children (his special interest), even the deaf evolve natural languages responding to the universal need to communicate. He refutes the ``comic history'' of linguistic determinism, the belief that language shapes thinking, undermining it with examples from music, mathematics, and kinship theory. Following his lively, user-friendly demonstration of even the most forbidding aspects of linguistics, and his discussion of vocabulary, how words are acquired, built, and used, he rises to a celebration of the ``harmony between the mind...and the texture of reality.'' This theme, the power and mystery of the human mind, permeates Pinker's engaging study, balanced with the more sober scientific belief that the mind is an ``adapted computational model'': ``To a scientist,'' he writes, ``the fundamental fact of human language is its sheer improbability.'' Among the many interesting though not sequential ideas: If language is innate, biologically based, then it can't be taught either to animals or computers. Pinker shows why adults have difficulty learning a foreign language, and he mediates coolly between rules and usage, between systematic and non-prescriptive grammar. Designed for a popular audience, this is in fact a hefty read full of wonder and wisdom. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Pinker, a respected cognitive scientist at MIT, has given the nonstudent a bridge into the interesting yet still controversial world of linguistics and cognitive science. Here, under a rather heavy Chomsky influence, Pinker discusses, among other things, how language evolved, how children acquire and develop language skills, and why the English language and its spelling aren't as nonlogical as such critics as George Bernard Shaw have claimed. Written for popular consumption, Pinker's discussions of such complicated arguments and theories as the various, disputable universal grammars and languages of thought, Quine's gavagai, and the world of morphemes and phonemes are all painless to read. Examples are clear and easy to understand; Pinker's humor and insight make this the perfect introduction to the world of cognitive science and language. Highly recommended for all academic libraries and for public libraries with solid psychology and philosophy collections. Caroline Andrew

Following fast on the heels of Joel Davis's Mother Tongue ( LJ 12/93) is another provocative and skillfully written book by an MIT professor who specializes in the language development of children. While Pinker covers some of the same ground as did Davis, he argues that an "innate grammatical machinery of the brain" exists, which allows children to "reinvent" language on their own. Basing his ideas on Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar theory, Pinker describes language as a "discrete combinatorial system" that might easily have evolved via natural selection. Pinker steps on a few toes (language mavens beware!), but his work, while controversial, is well argued, challenging, often humorous, and always fascinating. Most public and academic libraries will want to add this title to their collections.
- Laurie Bartolini, Lincoln Lib., Springfield, Ill.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688121411
• ISBN 13: 9780688121419
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 494