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Available
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Harper Perennial (1995), Paperback, 494 pages
Description
In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published. "Pinker writes with acid verve." --Atlantic Monthly "An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written." --Noam Chomsky… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member JollyContrarian
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 events in other's brains with exquisite precision".
It you take that for granted, Pinker's book will seem compelling and not
Consider the following, which I think perfectly encapsulates the world view Pinker can't conceive of, by Ogden Nash:
Caught in a mesh of living veins,
In cell of padded bone,
He loneliest is when he pretends
That he is not alone.
We'd free the incarcerate race of man
That such a doom endures
Could only you unlock my skull,
Or I creep into yours.
To my way of thinking, it is the very fact that we *can't* "shape events in other's brains with exquisite precision" - or with any reliable certainty at all, that describes the human condition. The frisson created by precisely that ambiguity underpins all communication; it is the source of irony, tragedy, comedy, invention and imagination. Any theory of language which denies that fundamental contingency of human communication (as this one does) is going to have to prove it, and displacing that onus is a heavy task indeed.
Pinker's psycho-linguistics makes precisely that denial, by holding that all human communication - every language - shares an inate, evolutionary programmed Universal Grammar, precisely because Pinker can't conceive how else human communication could be possible.
I'm no academic, and certainly I have no background in linguistics. Given that this theory - which is from the same tradition as Noam Chomsky's - has been the ascendancy amongst academic linguistics for the best part of the last thirty years, Steven Pinker being one of the leading "normal scientists" within the paradigm (if I should be so bold as to use that word), and that The Language Instinct is considered fairly widely to be his magnum opus, I was expecting to have my naive relativistic assumptions carefully and systematically dissected, then annihilated, one by one.
So imagine my surprise to find that in the place of carefully drawn arguments and compelling statistical data, one finds a tissue of anecdotal arguments carefully selected to fit the theory, arguments from authority ("Chomsky is one of the ten most cited writers in all of the humanities"), dubious suppositions in place of statistical data (the "it is difficult to imagine the following grammatical construction being used" sort of thing), begged questions, non sequiturs, and Roger Penrose-style irrelevant scientific waffle - especially as regards evolution - and a decided absence of any consideration of competing theories of linguistics - and straw men versions of those which do rate a mentioned.
In short, Steven Pinker employs just about every illegitimate arguing technique in the book. His theory completely fails to account for metaphor (metaphor is barely mentioned in the book), nor the incremental development of language, the evolution of different languages with different grammars and vocabularies. At times Pinker is forced to argue that the grammar of our language is sometimes different from the words we actually speak and write, containing unspoken "inaudible symbols" representing a word or phrase which has been moved elsewhere in the sentence, so the sentence "The car was put in the garage", according to Pinker's Universal Grammar should technically be rendered as: "was put the car in the garage", and the construction we use can only be explained by movement of "The car" and the insertion in its place of an inaudible "trace":
"[The car] was put [trace] in the garage".
Now, again I am no technical linguist, but this has all the hallmarks of pure bull manure to me.
Finally, Pinker is at pains to point out that Universal Grammar is only ever applicable to oral language: written language didn't arise for centuries after oral grammar "evolved" as a phenotype.
But this hardly helps Pinker, since (as he himself points out, with reference to a transcript of the Watergate Tapes) when people talk in ordinary conversation they almost *never* use complete grammatical sentences: they interrupt themselves, they rely on physical gestures, they break off in mid stream and start a new thought, they don't punctuate (there's no unequivocal punctuation in spoken English), all the time.
As is fashionable amongst the "reductivist" and "evolutionary" set these days (a set I would otherwise, in general terms, consider myself in agreement with), relativist arguments are scorned. But Pinker's paradigm implies that, provided we are competent in constructing our own sentences, we should all understand each other perfectly, all the time: there should be no ambiguity; no room for miscontrual; no possibility for evolution in ideas or language. It is difficult to see how anyone could believe such a thing. But neither the structure of language and grammar nor its practical use needs to be perfect for effective communication *at some level* to be possible, and surely that is all that is needed. The beauty of the contingent view of language, which Pinker seems unable to appreciate, is how it can account for the missed margin of communication which might explain the everyday cultural and interpretative problems we all face, and the figurative and metaphorical power we all find at our disposal. Ogden Nash's dilemma is our dilemma, however much Steven Pinker might wish it were otherwise.
An earlier reviewer has mentioned Geoffrey Sampson's "the Language Instinct Debate" as a compelling antidote to Pinker's world view. Having recently read it (on the strength of that recommendation), I would firmly agree. In perhaps an ill-advisedly grumpy tone, Sampson - whose position at the University of Sussex inevitably means his academic profile is lower than Pinker's or Chomsky's - systematically and convincingly annihilates many of the arguments (such as they are) in Pinker's work.
"For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in other's brains with exquisite precision".
It you take that for granted, Pinker's book will seem compelling and not
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especially controversial. Steven Pinker clearly takes it for granted, perhaps because he can't conceive of how we could possibly communicate effectively and coherently if it were not true. Consider the following, which I think perfectly encapsulates the world view Pinker can't conceive of, by Ogden Nash:
Caught in a mesh of living veins,
In cell of padded bone,
He loneliest is when he pretends
That he is not alone.
We'd free the incarcerate race of man
That such a doom endures
Could only you unlock my skull,
Or I creep into yours.
To my way of thinking, it is the very fact that we *can't* "shape events in other's brains with exquisite precision" - or with any reliable certainty at all, that describes the human condition. The frisson created by precisely that ambiguity underpins all communication; it is the source of irony, tragedy, comedy, invention and imagination. Any theory of language which denies that fundamental contingency of human communication (as this one does) is going to have to prove it, and displacing that onus is a heavy task indeed.
Pinker's psycho-linguistics makes precisely that denial, by holding that all human communication - every language - shares an inate, evolutionary programmed Universal Grammar, precisely because Pinker can't conceive how else human communication could be possible.
I'm no academic, and certainly I have no background in linguistics. Given that this theory - which is from the same tradition as Noam Chomsky's - has been the ascendancy amongst academic linguistics for the best part of the last thirty years, Steven Pinker being one of the leading "normal scientists" within the paradigm (if I should be so bold as to use that word), and that The Language Instinct is considered fairly widely to be his magnum opus, I was expecting to have my naive relativistic assumptions carefully and systematically dissected, then annihilated, one by one.
So imagine my surprise to find that in the place of carefully drawn arguments and compelling statistical data, one finds a tissue of anecdotal arguments carefully selected to fit the theory, arguments from authority ("Chomsky is one of the ten most cited writers in all of the humanities"), dubious suppositions in place of statistical data (the "it is difficult to imagine the following grammatical construction being used" sort of thing), begged questions, non sequiturs, and Roger Penrose-style irrelevant scientific waffle - especially as regards evolution - and a decided absence of any consideration of competing theories of linguistics - and straw men versions of those which do rate a mentioned.
In short, Steven Pinker employs just about every illegitimate arguing technique in the book. His theory completely fails to account for metaphor (metaphor is barely mentioned in the book), nor the incremental development of language, the evolution of different languages with different grammars and vocabularies. At times Pinker is forced to argue that the grammar of our language is sometimes different from the words we actually speak and write, containing unspoken "inaudible symbols" representing a word or phrase which has been moved elsewhere in the sentence, so the sentence "The car was put in the garage", according to Pinker's Universal Grammar should technically be rendered as: "was put the car in the garage", and the construction we use can only be explained by movement of "The car" and the insertion in its place of an inaudible "trace":
"[The car] was put [trace] in the garage".
Now, again I am no technical linguist, but this has all the hallmarks of pure bull manure to me.
Finally, Pinker is at pains to point out that Universal Grammar is only ever applicable to oral language: written language didn't arise for centuries after oral grammar "evolved" as a phenotype.
But this hardly helps Pinker, since (as he himself points out, with reference to a transcript of the Watergate Tapes) when people talk in ordinary conversation they almost *never* use complete grammatical sentences: they interrupt themselves, they rely on physical gestures, they break off in mid stream and start a new thought, they don't punctuate (there's no unequivocal punctuation in spoken English), all the time.
As is fashionable amongst the "reductivist" and "evolutionary" set these days (a set I would otherwise, in general terms, consider myself in agreement with), relativist arguments are scorned. But Pinker's paradigm implies that, provided we are competent in constructing our own sentences, we should all understand each other perfectly, all the time: there should be no ambiguity; no room for miscontrual; no possibility for evolution in ideas or language. It is difficult to see how anyone could believe such a thing. But neither the structure of language and grammar nor its practical use needs to be perfect for effective communication *at some level* to be possible, and surely that is all that is needed. The beauty of the contingent view of language, which Pinker seems unable to appreciate, is how it can account for the missed margin of communication which might explain the everyday cultural and interpretative problems we all face, and the figurative and metaphorical power we all find at our disposal. Ogden Nash's dilemma is our dilemma, however much Steven Pinker might wish it were otherwise.
An earlier reviewer has mentioned Geoffrey Sampson's "the Language Instinct Debate" as a compelling antidote to Pinker's world view. Having recently read it (on the strength of that recommendation), I would firmly agree. In perhaps an ill-advisedly grumpy tone, Sampson - whose position at the University of Sussex inevitably means his academic profile is lower than Pinker's or Chomsky's - systematically and convincingly annihilates many of the arguments (such as they are) in Pinker's work.
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LibraryThing member Razinha
This is listed as one of the New Scientist Top 25 Most Influential Popular Science books. The thesis is solid...the execution burdensome. Here's a thought: make a point; reinforce a point; if at that point you feel the need to keep talking, show the reader where in the footnotes or appendix all the
Pinker spends an enormous amount of time talking about language grammar and the English language in particular, none of which have anything to do with why language is instinctual. It would have been a lot more tedious if I hadn't just listened to John McWhorter's lectures on The Story of Human language. The parallels could not have been coincidental...both relating elements of language development, grammar structure, proto-languages...but McWhorter wasn't talking about instinct. He was talking about language. Pinker undermines his case with all the side trips down linguist lane. Focus on instinct, not on the idiosyncrasies of a hodgepodge tongue.
Pinker could have made his point very well in 100 pages. I admire succinct conveyance of knowledge. Pinker sure has a way of complicating concepts with extraneous details. I didn't admire this book.
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repetitious extras can be found. Pinker spends an enormous amount of time talking about language grammar and the English language in particular, none of which have anything to do with why language is instinctual. It would have been a lot more tedious if I hadn't just listened to John McWhorter's lectures on The Story of Human language. The parallels could not have been coincidental...both relating elements of language development, grammar structure, proto-languages...but McWhorter wasn't talking about instinct. He was talking about language. Pinker undermines his case with all the side trips down linguist lane. Focus on instinct, not on the idiosyncrasies of a hodgepodge tongue.
Pinker could have made his point very well in 100 pages. I admire succinct conveyance of knowledge. Pinker sure has a way of complicating concepts with extraneous details. I didn't admire this book.
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LibraryThing member bragan
As the title of this book might suggest, Steven Pinker, following in the footsteps of Noam Chomsky, contends that humans are born with an innate instinct for language. Not with language itself, obviously, but with mechanisms in our brains that make it easy for us to learn language and that account
Pinker goes into a lot of detail about how languages are structured and how our brains process that structure. I found this detail quite interesting, but rather slow going, despite the fact that Pinker's prose is very accessible to the layman and is broken up here and there with moments of humor or the occasional whimsical quotation. Those who are just looking for a general overview of the subject might find those chapters, which make up about half the book, to be a bit much, but if you're at all interested in the nitty-gritty details of how the human brain constructs sentences, it's well worth reading.
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for commonalities of structure that exist across all languages, despite their obvious variability. Some of Pinker's arguments and conclusions are stronger than others, but the general idea seems pretty sound to me, although I know there's still some controversy over it, two decades later.Pinker goes into a lot of detail about how languages are structured and how our brains process that structure. I found this detail quite interesting, but rather slow going, despite the fact that Pinker's prose is very accessible to the layman and is broken up here and there with moments of humor or the occasional whimsical quotation. Those who are just looking for a general overview of the subject might find those chapters, which make up about half the book, to be a bit much, but if you're at all interested in the nitty-gritty details of how the human brain constructs sentences, it's well worth reading.
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LibraryThing member tkhanson
Pinker is a wonderful writer, and I enjoyed this book almost as much for the writing as the content (which was extremely stimulating). He makes a very convincing case, especially so if you don't know much about linguistics (I didn't). After reading this I went on to read other books on "mentalese"
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(aka "the language of thought"), and found that Pinker's position is pretty controversial and probably on the decline. I don't know how much of the rest of the book is like this, but it's worth reading, regardless. Show Less
LibraryThing member PrintAvenger
I enjoyed the way that Pinker is able to make difficult and often dry subject matter appealing to a wider audience, but I think at times he went a bit far with the pop-culture references and it started to annoy me.
LibraryThing member dmsteyn
A highly readable account on how language is an inherent characteristic of the human species, which I found a bit unpleasant to read at times. Pinker is such a good writer that I feel a little inadequate in responding to his book, but that aside, I thought it was an erudite book on a complex topic,
Pinker is on much firmer, and to me more interesting, ground when he explains the psychological and evolutionary origins of language. This is simply brilliant and lucid exposition, and I enjoyed it immeasurably. Pinker’s explanation of how language evolves in children, and how this seems to argue for a ‘language instinct’ in humans (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar) is masterful. I also enjoyed his withering refutations of the assertions of those primatologists who claim to have taught chimpanzees sign language, and the more absurd claims of some anthropologists (such as the infamous ‘100 different words for snow’ claimed for the Eskimos).
My one problem with the book is that it came out in 1994, so how up to date it is, in an ever-changing field, is problematic. I wish Pinker would update the book, but maybe he’s too busy writing books about the decline in violence (The Better Angels of Our Nature, which I intend to read next year), and whatnot.
Highly recommended, but not one to swallow hook, line, and sinker.
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like all Pinker’s books. It is also a bit controversial, as Pinker skewers many a layman’s misguided ideas about language, its origins, and its uniqueness to humanity. And not only a layman’s ideas; Pinker takes everyone from the social scientists to what he calls the ‘language mavens’ (editors and other arbiters of prescriptive grammar) to task for promulgating false ideas about language. I found Pinker’s more polemical chapters a bit uncongenial, mostly because they attack some of my own subconscious ideas about language. I didn’t realise that I felt as strongly about prescriptive grammar until Pinker attacked it and its proponents. I don’t mind Pinker’s attacks on some of the more archaic rules of grammar (such as split infinitives and ending sentences on prepositions, and so forth) but I did find his fulminating a bit tiresome at times, especially when he sets up some straw men that he can easily knockdown. A quibble, really, but still.Pinker is on much firmer, and to me more interesting, ground when he explains the psychological and evolutionary origins of language. This is simply brilliant and lucid exposition, and I enjoyed it immeasurably. Pinker’s explanation of how language evolves in children, and how this seems to argue for a ‘language instinct’ in humans (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar) is masterful. I also enjoyed his withering refutations of the assertions of those primatologists who claim to have taught chimpanzees sign language, and the more absurd claims of some anthropologists (such as the infamous ‘100 different words for snow’ claimed for the Eskimos).
My one problem with the book is that it came out in 1994, so how up to date it is, in an ever-changing field, is problematic. I wish Pinker would update the book, but maybe he’s too busy writing books about the decline in violence (The Better Angels of Our Nature, which I intend to read next year), and whatnot.
Highly recommended, but not one to swallow hook, line, and sinker.
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LibraryThing member ElOsoBlanco
I read this for my first and second language acquisition class, and while I didn't love it, I definitely didn't hate it either. I liked Pinker's use of examples when trying to describe complex language issues, however, I wished sometimes that he would have stopped at two or three examples per
If you're into books on language, then go ahead and give this a read.
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topic. Once or twice he would use an entire chapter simply to expound upon different examples that helped him make his point. I get it Mr. Pinker. If you're into books on language, then go ahead and give this a read.
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LibraryThing member co_coyote
This is a book I gave to my oldest son one Christmas when he was in love
with language and it looked like he was heading down the path to becoming a
linguist. He went back to school before I could steal the book off his bookshelf
to read it, so when I found it on his bookshelf in Seattle I was
wanted to read this book for a long time. It was worth the wait. Pinker is an
excellent science writer and he makes the (often difficult) material as easy to
understand as anyone could. An excellent book.
with language and it looked like he was heading down the path to becoming a
linguist. He went back to school before I could steal the book off his bookshelf
to read it, so when I found it on his bookshelf in Seattle I was
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overjoyed. I'vewanted to read this book for a long time. It was worth the wait. Pinker is an
excellent science writer and he makes the (often difficult) material as easy to
understand as anyone could. An excellent book.
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LibraryThing member john257hopper
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 would just be reading a few pages a couple of times a week. I mostly accept the author's theory of the language instinct
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and a universal grammar underlying all languages, though perhaps he overstates it in parts. He is good at debunking linguistic pedants (mavens) and those who romanticise "talking" chimpanzees. Show Less
LibraryThing member annbury
Absolutely key book for those interested in how language evolved. Some of its central points are the subject of impassioned debate: Pinker is a Chomskyite, and argues that humans are born with an instinctual ability to learn the language spoken around them. Many others are less deterministic.
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Pinker's evidence -- the extraordinary speed with which children of two to four learn language -- is powerful, but underlying assumption of an innate "grammatical gene" is not accepted by many in the field. Despite the debate, those with an interest in how language developed and what it is should read this book. Not only is it thought provoking, it is very, very well written. Show Less
LibraryThing member psiloiordinary
This guy is very clever. He is even cleverer at explaining the clever things he thinks about in such a clever way that you don't need to be nearly as clever as him to get to drips with them.
I confess to getting completely lost in the grammar discussions and skipping forwards a little. But even then
The main reason I like this chaps books is because they are all about me.
They are about you as well, so go and read them now.
Beautifully written with a naughty sense of humour and one hell of a profound message.
I confess to getting completely lost in the grammar discussions and skipping forwards a little. But even then
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I found the rest of the book very rewarding indeed.The main reason I like this chaps books is because they are all about me.
They are about you as well, so go and read them now.
Beautifully written with a naughty sense of humour and one hell of a profound message.
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LibraryThing member joyharmon
Helped me to understand how language is learned and in this sense has been very helpful in my teaching of ESL students. A bit complex, but worth the time spent to read and understand it. The benefit is in understanding. You have to find your own way to apply it. But unlike many book on educational
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pedogogy, it's real and it's useful. Show Less
LibraryThing member EowynA
I greatly enjoyed this book, and read all but the last quarter of the last chapter about 5 years ago, maybe more. I set it down, and never finished it. I came across it again in the book case, started at the bookmark, and finished it. I know I never counted it in any of my yearly book lists, though
His thesis is that the mind has an instinct for language - that we are Not a blank slate when we are born. The mind makes certain assumptions about patterns, and what patterns are meaningful. He does this by looking at commonalities across languages, experiments in (and humor created to show) how people use words, and studies of how children acquire their native language. Pinker is a Darwinist, so he examines how this instinct could have been selected for, evolutionarily.
His writing style is readable and clear, but on the dry side. He leavens it with humor, but still it takes some effort to get through. Here is one example, from the book opened at random: "To become speakers, children cannot just memorize; they must leap into the linguistic unknown and generalize to an infinite world of as-yet-unspoken sentences. But there are untold numbers of seductive false leaps: Mind -> minded, but not Find -> finded," and he goes on with more examples (found on page 281). Another example from p. 85: "The way language works, then, is that each person's brain contains a lexicon of words and the concepts they stand for (a mental dictionary) and a set of rules that combine the words to convey relationships among concepts (a mental grammar)." Then he goes on to discuss the examples that support this thesis.
But for anyone interested in language, linguistics, and how the mind works, Steven Pinker's books are all essential reading. Just give yourself the time. They are not a quick read. There is much to chew on here.
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it has influenced my thought since I started reading it. His thesis is that the mind has an instinct for language - that we are Not a blank slate when we are born. The mind makes certain assumptions about patterns, and what patterns are meaningful. He does this by looking at commonalities across languages, experiments in (and humor created to show) how people use words, and studies of how children acquire their native language. Pinker is a Darwinist, so he examines how this instinct could have been selected for, evolutionarily.
His writing style is readable and clear, but on the dry side. He leavens it with humor, but still it takes some effort to get through. Here is one example, from the book opened at random: "To become speakers, children cannot just memorize; they must leap into the linguistic unknown and generalize to an infinite world of as-yet-unspoken sentences. But there are untold numbers of seductive false leaps: Mind -> minded, but not Find -> finded," and he goes on with more examples (found on page 281). Another example from p. 85: "The way language works, then, is that each person's brain contains a lexicon of words and the concepts they stand for (a mental dictionary) and a set of rules that combine the words to convey relationships among concepts (a mental grammar)." Then he goes on to discuss the examples that support this thesis.
But for anyone interested in language, linguistics, and how the mind works, Steven Pinker's books are all essential reading. Just give yourself the time. They are not a quick read. There is much to chew on here.
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LibraryThing member Demiguise
This book was my introduction to Steven Pinker. It was a textbook for an introductory class on linguistics. I hadn't had any previous experience, so parts of the book were a bit slow-going, I enjoyed Pinker's style and ideas enough to purchase several more of his books.
LibraryThing member cmbohn
I had a hard time with this book. When I started it, I was excited because the introduction was really good and it looked like the rest of the book would be also. But it soon got very technical and dull. Then it would get more interesting again. Then it would be very hard to read and understand.
I don't really know how to rate this book. The basic idea is that language is a human instinct, and that language is acquired naturally. I understood a lot of his examples and some of what he said made sense. But I was frankly lost a lot of the time. I did study linguistics at least a little back in college, but that was not much help here.
I would say if you are interested in the subject, it might be worth a try, but it's certainly not for everyone.
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Then we'd have several pages of diagrams and obscure notation.I don't really know how to rate this book. The basic idea is that language is a human instinct, and that language is acquired naturally. I understood a lot of his examples and some of what he said made sense. But I was frankly lost a lot of the time. I did study linguistics at least a little back in college, but that was not much help here.
I would say if you are interested in the subject, it might be worth a try, but it's certainly not for everyone.
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LibraryThing member Move_and_Merge
I don't much care for Pinker and find it daunting that he's somehow attained "celebrity" status in cognitive science. Was it with books like this that he did so? This basically reads like an extended defense of Chomsky's universal grammar (UG) and Fodor's language of thought (LOT) hypothesis
Oh, and the jokes aren't funny.
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(perhaps not surprising--Pinker's name often comes up when a discussion of "mentalese" is at hand). A great deal of it is vacuous and it affords criticisms of UG and LOT barely a nod. Overall, lazy and predictable. Oh, and the jokes aren't funny.
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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
Steven Pinker's work is fifteen or so years old, but it feels fresh and vital and very, very necessary. Pinker makes a compelling case for there being a true, hereditable, evolved language centre in the brain, and he gives many, many examples of how this could work, and why it is probably true.
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'The Language Instinct' is an excellent introduction to the science of biological linguistics; should I take my studies in this area no further, I will at least know now a lot more about this fascinating topic than I did before. Show Less
LibraryThing member nocto
Took me a terribly long time to get through this book, but I did enjoy it a lot.
LibraryThing member thierry
In this highly praised book, the author covers a lot of ground on how language was created and constructed, how it is learnt and how it evolves. The author argues that language is a human instinct hard-wired in our brains. Frankly, I found this book tough to read for very scientific and sometimes
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dry. It is an interesting technical subject but I miss the sociolinguistic aspect of it – communities speaking languages over time, imagining a human context. The book is still on my shelf, perhaps I should read it again. Show Less
LibraryThing member miketroll
If you only ever read one book about the science of language, make it this one. Drawing on the imagery of the computer age, Steven Pinker makes a powerful case for the idea that we are born with language skills etched in the hard drive of our brains.
LibraryThing member nocto
Took me a terribly long time to get through this book, but I did enjoy it a lot.
LibraryThing member farrhon
Groundbreaking then, passé now
LibraryThing member RajivC
This is indeed quite an amazing book. The writing style is simple, and Stevenmanages to handle this considerably complex subject with a great deal of dexterity.
Each chapter is complete in itself, and I would recommend that each chapter be read on a separate day. This allows you to think about what
It is not a book for the casual reader, nor for the dilettante.
It is a book that you must return to after a while.
Each chapter is complete in itself, and I would recommend that each chapter be read on a separate day. This allows you to think about what
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has been written, before proceeding further. It is not a book for the casual reader, nor for the dilettante.
It is a book that you must return to after a while.
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LibraryThing member _Greg
This is the most delightful book written by the amazing and brilliant Steven Pinker. It covers the nature of human language from the most modern perspective. It is also a thoroughly delightful read for anyone with any interest in this area.
LibraryThing member themulhern
Pinker's books are always easy to read and absorbing. I believe that this was his very first book for a popular audience and he certainly got off to a good start. However, he contradicts himself in the first chapter and in a later chapter seems unaware that "flitch" and "thole" not only sound like
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they might be English words, but actually are. I'm right there with him when he debunks some stupid usage rules, like the injunction not to split the infinitive. But, although I'm a computer scientist, and know my Chomsky hierarchy and context-free grammars very well, his more technical discussion of grammar seem not to make sense. Somehow, this book feels a little lightweight; probably I'm not quite his intended audience. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1994
Physical description
576 p.; 5.31 inches
ISBN
0061336467 / 9780061336461