In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, ho... read full description
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Dec 12, 2010
Manny
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There's a joke in this book that linguists really like. An English woman has just got off the plane at Boston's Logan airport. She takes a cab, and starts questioning the driver about where to obtain various local delicacies.
"Oh yes," she says in her posh English accent. "Could you tell me where you can get scrod here?"
And the driver replies, "You know, you don't often hear that in the pluperfect subjunctive!"
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"Oh yes," she says in her posh English accent. "Could you tell me where you can get scrod here?"
And the driver replies, "You know, you don't often hear that in the pluperfect subjunctive!"
___________________________ More...
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Jun 02, 2010
Nicholas
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Feb 25, 2009
Tyas
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A friend, a diplomat’s daughter, when asked how she had managed to master Dutch when she went to a school in Suriname, shrugged.
“I don’t know. I remember being so confused during the first day, not understanding a single word. But not so long after that, I was able to speak in Dutch. I just spoke, I don’t know how.”
That had happened years ago, when she was still very young. We have always wondered how come children are able to learn language easily, while many, if not most More...
“I don’t know. I remember being so confused during the first day, not understanding a single word. But not so long after that, I was able to speak in Dutch. I just spoke, I don’t know how.”
That had happened years ago, when she was still very young. We have always wondered how come children are able to learn language easily, while many, if not most More...
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Jun 24, 2009
Emanuela
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I have barely started it but I'm loving it already. I'll be back with a much more enriched review once I've finished it.
Now that I have finished it (about two weeks ago) I can finally write something more about it.
To begin with, I must confess I have had a few troubles finishing this book, but simply because I've fallen so in love with it that it really cost me a lot to end it.
The Language Instinct has definitely made it to the top three list of my all time More...
Now that I have finished it (about two weeks ago) I can finally write something more about it.
To begin with, I must confess I have had a few troubles finishing this book, but simply because I've fallen so in love with it that it really cost me a lot to end it.
The Language Instinct has definitely made it to the top three list of my all time More...
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Sep 18, 2008
Mark
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A book that tells you all that you might want to know about how humans are able to communicate with language. Pinker praises the work of Chomsky and tries to show that the fundamentals of language are built into the human mind, an instinct that is refined by our natural surroundings. He gives many examples of a fundamental grammar that all humans speaking whatever language have, which they use to organize sentences in their own language even if the sentence structures of two different language
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Aug 11, 2008
Arthur
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This is a must-read for anyone interested in how language works. As the title would indicate, Pinker argues that language is an instinct and that our brains come pre-programmed with a Universal Grammar and an innate capacity to fill in the blanks with the specific grammatical rules and vocabulary we hear people use around us.
He also describes the basics of the modern science of language developed by Noam Chomsky and his followers, and although this section is a little technical, it More...
He also describes the basics of the modern science of language developed by Noam Chomsky and his followers, and although this section is a little technical, it More...
Jul 22, 2008
Chris
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This one was recommended to me by Ben, and he was spot-on in thinking that I would find it both interesting and enlightening. I cracked open the book thinking that it was going to be just another discussion of linguistics, but it ended up dealing a heckuvalot more with neurology and human behavior, drawing particular attention to the interesting tendencies that we humans have built-in for the construction, use, and comprehension of spoken language.
The author seems quite fair in his br More...
The author seems quite fair in his br More...
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Nov 26, 2010
Emily
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May 01, 2011
Jessica
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I had The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language out of the library for the entire summer. I finally finished it by actively reading it on the train for a couple of weeks. It's interesting, don't get me wrong, it's just LONG and has enough dull/confusing stretches that I couldn't bring myself to read it in my free time - it was pretty much a train-only book.
The book's underlying claim is that all human beings are born with something Pinker calls a Universal Grammar, which cau More...
The book's underlying claim is that all human beings are born with something Pinker calls a Universal Grammar, which cau More...
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Jan 29, 2011
Steve
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After a slow start, this book comes alive mid-way through when Pinker moves beyond the universal syntax of all languages to talk about the innate language abilities we are born with and how language, speech and hearing function within the brain.
This book is rich with anecdotes and interesting facts. For instance no tribe has been discovered in modern times that didn't have a developed language equal in complexity to our so-called modern languages. Or, if a person is only exposed to More...
This book is rich with anecdotes and interesting facts. For instance no tribe has been discovered in modern times that didn't have a developed language equal in complexity to our so-called modern languages. Or, if a person is only exposed to More...
Oct 02, 2010
Naxa
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I want to say one thing about this before I go on. I agree with this books central thesis that language is instinctual or has a genetic starting point within our biological context. My problem with this book is his writing style and his argumentative style.
At the start of this book he addresses a few chapters that are only loosely affiliated with the main core of his argumentation which really kicks off around the middle of the book. In one of the early chapters he says that mothere More...
At the start of this book he addresses a few chapters that are only loosely affiliated with the main core of his argumentation which really kicks off around the middle of the book. In one of the early chapters he says that mothere More...
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Sep 02, 2009
Billie
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I was really surprised by this book. Pinker surveys some of the major research programs in linguistics, including in cases of overlap with fields such as neuroscience, psychology, and sociology. The book also provides several arguments in attempt to explain why it is that linguists pursue certain kinds of research programs. For example, the influence of Noam Chomsky's argument for a Universal Grammar is analyzed, and with Pinker's elucidations, seems to be a well-justified research program. The
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Aug 15, 2009
Max
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This review is edition-specific. Excellent, if highly abridged, reading of the famous popularization of linguistic nativism. Lalla Ward, Richard Dawkins's wife and once an actress on Doctor Who, is well known among those who like science audiobooks for her contributions to the audio versions of her husband's The God Delusion and The Ancestor's Tale. Her reading here is characteristically lively, and of course, the material leaves nothing to be desired. Especially good was that one interview with
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Dec 28, 2010
Koen
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Pinker is as much of a twit as his hair suggests: The Language Instinct is a miserable pile of unsupported and unsupportable conclusions, straw man attacks, hypocrisy leap-frogging into doublethink, shoddy reasoning, knee-jerk contrarianism, indeliberate obtusity, and gut-feeling argumentation. Pinker tries to synthesize the ideas of people smarter than he is (Chomsky, mostly), and many of these are perfectly fine the way they were originally formulated; they no longer are after Pinker is throug
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Jul 28, 2009
Anthony
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it's hard to say what possessed me to read this book now of all times. some people will know that i've read most of ray jackendoff's Patterns in the Mind, which covers a lot of the same ground, and i've also taken/audited courses on semantic/syntactic theory with ray, so why read pinker?
while confirming a lot of things any casual student of cognitive/psycho-linguistics will already know by now, pinker is still definitely worth reading, and in this book he's at his finest. he explains More...
while confirming a lot of things any casual student of cognitive/psycho-linguistics will already know by now, pinker is still definitely worth reading, and in this book he's at his finest. he explains More...
Oct 09, 2010
Steven Pinker and I should be natural enemies. He's a representative of what I consider to be the smarmy, science-precludes-all-else school of hung-up modernist reductionists, while I fly the flag of what he considers to be the wishy-washy, Nietzsche-damaged academic Left. And yet it's difficult for me not to have some respect for his project.
When he's not making potshots at relativism(s), he is generally quite lucid and charming, and throughout writes with a clear, approachable lo More...
When he's not making potshots at relativism(s), he is generally quite lucid and charming, and throughout writes with a clear, approachable lo More...
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Mar 16, 2011
Scarlett
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I originally bought this book as supplemental reading for one of my linguistics classes, but didn't read the whole thing at that point. Then I saw Steven Pinker speak and so when I found this book at my parents house I decided to give it a go.
In the past, I have been known to down-rate scientific books if they are outdated. I am definitely interested in reading some of Pinker's more recent stuff but this book was great. I think one of his biggest strengths as a writer, speaker, and More...
In the past, I have been known to down-rate scientific books if they are outdated. I am definitely interested in reading some of Pinker's more recent stuff but this book was great. I think one of his biggest strengths as a writer, speaker, and More...
Aug 24, 2009
Jessica
rated it:
It's only appropriate that a book about language be written engagingly, and Steven Pinker is very fun to "listen" to. He lays out the evidence for a hard-wired ability for languages built into the structure of human brains (physically residing in the perisylvian region where Wernicke's and Broca's areas are), and livens things up with interesting examples from the scientific literature (kids are grammar geniuses) and fun quotes from sources from newspapers to Shakespeare. I appreciated
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Sep 21, 2011
James
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I don't often read something that actually changes the way I understand my world. I've been aware of Noam Chomsky's name and have vaguely associated it with a poorly understood and not-at-all-subscribed-to-by-me notion of an innate "universal grammar" for a long time. I was one of the kind of people discussed in this book, who believe that thought itself depends on language. I subscribed to what Pinker calls "The Standard Social Science Model" of absolute cultural relativi
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Dec 13, 2011
Emma
rated it:
I was told to read this book as my first assignment for my internship in the psycholinguistics lab. It was excellent. It got progressively more technical, and required more analytical thinking as I went, but it was worth it. Pinker is excellent at using examples to clarify his meaning. Since this field is of particular interest to me, the examples, which spanned dozens of obscure languages, were fascinating. Definitely worth a read if you want to learn about how every human being organizes a spo
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Dec 17, 2011
Sheila
rated it:
After reading The Language Instinct, you will be able to:
Defend English spelling, however ludicrous it may seem
Disprove the notion that TV is a useful tool for language development
Annoy feminists who want to introduce new pronouns into common usage
Argue that German is just as innately melodious as French to the untrained ear
See through people who claim they can train chimps to sign like humans
Refute the language mavens, who out of a sense of classism hav More...
Defend English spelling, however ludicrous it may seem
Disprove the notion that TV is a useful tool for language development
Annoy feminists who want to introduce new pronouns into common usage
Argue that German is just as innately melodious as French to the untrained ear
See through people who claim they can train chimps to sign like humans
Refute the language mavens, who out of a sense of classism hav More...
Aug 30, 2011
Katya
rated it:
Probably the best book I have read on the topic. For starters, Pinker's writing is a pleasure to read: It's clear, clever, and affable. He writes the way he talks; he doesn't seem to feel the need to use fancy words just because he's writing a book (e.g. from the glossary entry for stem: "The main portion of a word, the one that prefixes and suffixes are stuck onto." He avoids that (inexplicable) academic affectation of pretending that the author and the reader don't exist (i.e., avoid
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Jun 13, 2009
Juliet
rated it:
Anyone who is interested in languages should read this book! It's accessible, informative, intellectually stimulating, entertaining and sometimes infuriating. Pinker puts forward the idea that language is instinctive and looks at the evolution of language, how grammar works and the genetics of language. Academic linguistics is kept to a minimum, instead examples are given of how language works in real life situations. Pinker explored questions such as can chimpanzees really be taught sign langua
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Jul 01, 2011
Nancy
rated it:
If your not sure about this book. Just pick it up in the bookstore and turn to page 355. If find the chart there terribly amusing then go ahead and buy it. If not you might want to move on.
Pinker has obviously thought about this, a lot.
<quote>...people simply assume that words determine thoughts...Sometimes it is not easy to find any words that properly convey a thought. When we hear or read, we usually remember the gist, not the exact words, so there has to be such More...
Pinker has obviously thought about this, a lot.
<quote>...people simply assume that words determine thoughts...Sometimes it is not easy to find any words that properly convey a thought. When we hear or read, we usually remember the gist, not the exact words, so there has to be such More...
Jan 08, 2011
Andrew
rated it:
As far as I can see, a popular science book should have two aims. The first aim is to answer the questions I was trying to pretend I was not asking. You know the ones, the questions that bother you for a moment but you then dismiss as precisely that, as bothersome, as unimportant. The second aim is to convince you that they are important.
This book gets four stars. It got five for achieving both of those aims spectacularly on a topic I love. It looses two stars for it's occasional inco More...
This book gets four stars. It got five for achieving both of those aims spectacularly on a topic I love. It looses two stars for it's occasional inco More...
May 24, 2011
D.
rated it:
Pinker makes a good case, and I have learned a lot from the book. The basics of what he says are on the right track, but the details still have to be worked out. Those, however, are to be tackled side by side with evolutionary biologists.
Pinker's writing style is simply delicious. I love it when a 'serious' writer is not afraid to insert humour in his otherwise 'serious' explanations. I even used the 'sex between two cars' example to explain the difference between adjuncts and arguments to More...
Pinker's writing style is simply delicious. I love it when a 'serious' writer is not afraid to insert humour in his otherwise 'serious' explanations. I even used the 'sex between two cars' example to explain the difference between adjuncts and arguments to More...
Jul 18, 2009
Khalid
rated it:
The Language Instinct is a book addressing the subject of language, how we learn it, how it develops, and how the basic concepts of grammar are innate to the human brain.
The book addresses many interesting topics, but the style in which it is delivered did not always appeal to me. At some points, I felt it was going into too much unnecessary details, and at others, I felt that the point the author was trying to make was not sufficiently addressed or proven.
I still learne More...
The book addresses many interesting topics, but the style in which it is delivered did not always appeal to me. At some points, I felt it was going into too much unnecessary details, and at others, I felt that the point the author was trying to make was not sufficiently addressed or proven.
I still learne More...
Nov 02, 2011
Debbie
rated it:
More technical than I expected, but easier than reading Chomsky himself, I guess, to get a sense of what deep tranformational grammar is all about. Pinker makes a convincing case for proving the biological basis of the language instinct and the discreet combinatorial systems underlying it. All the more reason for teaching languages to children by immersing them in kindergarten! The studies of deaf children and creole languages are particularly interesting, showing how children re-create l
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Aug 02, 2010
Matt
rated it:
This is a great overview on language and cognition research from an authority on the subject. I read it as a beginner's introduction to actually doing linguistic research, so there were sections of the book that left me unfulfilled. The material that is covered, however, is fascinating and nicely presented (with some of the repetition that I have come to expect from scientific books of this kind). If you have an interest in how we use language, and how language is developed in the human mind,
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Jun 17, 2009
Mary
rated it:
A subject which fascinates me. A fun, quick read. Alas, since I studied linguistics and speech pathology in college, little of this was new information. I found myself repeatedly wishing the book would delve more deeply into certain subjects. I'd be interested in books that would do this that don't have a dry, textbook feel.
(Erm, this book does not have a dry, textbook feel. Not at all. In other words, I'd like to read more books like this one that delve more deeply into spec More...
(Erm, this book does not have a dry, textbook feel. Not at all. In other words, I'd like to read more books like this one that delve more deeply into spec More...
