Genealogy Books - The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (P.S.)

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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Interesting Book:
Comment: I have to say, I really did like Pinker's book. This book the first of its kind that I have ever
read so it may not be right for me to comment. However, I found the subject of language acquisition
intriguing. Interesting case studies were revealed, however, I would say that maybe too many cases
were offered. The writing style is extremely clear and it is a bit humorous. Toward 3/4 through the
book, I began to get a little bored, but, again, I must admit that it is mostly because I did not
understand the information that he was communicating. (Like I said, I have never read a book like
this before.) Particularly interesting was the chapter on the Big Bang theory and how internal
grammar structures within an individual can be harmonized with Darwinian evolution. This I found
most interesting. However, in my opinion, Pinker did not answer this harmonization with a definite
appeal to serious questions raised. It may be the case that I just did not understand what Pinker
was implying, but as far as I'm concerned, only half of the questions raised in my head were
answered. However, all in all, I found this book to be a helpful started in this area of study.
Pinker uses an array of sources and draws from interesting material. I would recommend this book to
anyone interested in learning more about the complexity of language formulation and internal
cognitive processes which affect language.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A fascinating primer on language, designed for the layman
Comment: If you are someone who is not content until they know the HOW and WHY of everything, then this book
is for you.

This book explains, in layman's terms, the how and why of language.
It's very thorough for its purpose, covering everything from letters, to how we make sound, to why
syntax is what it is, to how babies 'learn' to speak, and too many other things to mention. />
Coming from the point of knowing nothing on the topic, the whole read was nothing short of
fascinating for me. It's the type of book where every 10 pages or so you get those "oh, so that's
why...." moment about something you have done all your life, and the nine pages in between are
mostly real world examples of that fascinating tidbit in action.

Now, it has to be
noted that I'm no linguist (even if I do pay the mortgage by writing in languages only computers
understand), but this book is designed for me. This book probably isn't designed for someone who
needs to know this stuff at an academic level higher than Community College. That doesn't mean it's
dumbed down, just that the focus is on explaining the concept's function, and real world
application, rather then listing all the Latin terms.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A Thorough and Entertaining Introduction to Language
Comment: As someone who has had a fascination about languages, this book was the perfect choice for my
undergraduate neuroscience class--it's objective is to elucidate how the mind creates language. The
prose is extremely well-written and complex ideas clearly explained. Pinker takes the reader on a
very fun and thought-provoking journey, providing fascinating insights for both the
casually-interested reader and linguists alike. I will highlight on some key points presented
throughout.

The first sections illustrate the key themes that Pinker will elaborate on
throughout the rest of the book. He presents language as being an evolutionary adaptation that is
unique to humans, just as much as a trunk is an adaptation for elephants or sonar for a bat. It is
an instinct that we innately are born with. One of the myths about language is the notion that
language is taught or transmitted, whether from mother to baby, or from one civilization to another.
In actuality, children seem to be born with "Universal Grammar," a blueprint for all grammars on
earth. "Virtually every sentence is a brand new combination of words. Therefore a language cannot be
a repertoire of responses; the brain must contain a recipe or program that can build an unlimited
set of sentences out of a finite list of words (9)." Likewise, there has yet to be a civilization
found that is devoid of language. For example, a group of a million people had inhabited an area
isolated from the rest of the world in New Guinea for forty thousand years, yet had independently
developed their own language, as discovered when first contact was made in the 1920s.
/>Another important concept presented is "mentalese", a euphemism for a theory of thinking known as
"computational/representational theory of mind." It essentially negates the common myth that thought
is dependent on language and its corollary, that since people of different backgrounds than us have
different languages, they must think differently. There is thought to be a universal "mentalese,"
and to "know a language" is simply being able to translate mentalese into strings of words in that
language.

The second section of the book is a comprehensive summary of the basic parts
of language, with plentiful information regarding syntax, phrase structure, morphemes, and more. A
key point made is the recent discovery of a common anatomy in all the world's languages, called
"X-bar theory." With the general set of rules, children do not have to "learn" lists and lists of
rules for each language via rote memorization, but are born knowing the linguistic framework. They
are then able to go from speaking a few isolated words to complex yet grammatically coherent
sentences in a matter of months.

In the next section, Pinker introduces the concept of
the "parser", which is the mental program that analyzes sentence structure during language
comprehension. Grammar is simply a protocol, which does not necessitate understanding. In a
nutshell, as the person reads a sentence, the parser will group phrases, building "phrase trees",
consistent with linguistic rules (for example, a noun phrase is followed by a verb phrase). It is
interesting that grammatically correct yet poorly constructed sentences can cause a person great
difficulty in comprehension--the rationale is that the parser will not present the person with the
correct phrase tree, among copious possible combinations.

Pinker goes on to describe
the differences between languages. Despite grammatical difference between languages, such as
subject(S)/verb(V)/object(O) order (SVO, SOV, etc), fixed-word-order/free-word-order (if phrase
order can vary or not), there are striking similarities. The most prominent are implications--if a
language has X, it will have Y. For example, if the basic order of a language is SOV, it will have
question words at the beginning of the sentence (234).

Pinker cites three processes
that act on languages that result in the differences that we see evident in languages today:
innovation, learning, and migration. For example in the case of migration, though the roots of
English are from Northern Germany, the existence of thousands of French words in English is the
legacy of the invasion of Britain by the Normans in 1066. One of the most broad-reaching
relationships between current modern languages can be traced back to the possible existence of a
proto-Indo-European language, whose modern-day descendents span from Western Europe to the Indian
subcontinent.

Over the final chapters, Pinker elaborates on the amazing
explosion of language acquisition in children during their first three years. He explains the
significance of Broca's and Wernicke's in language, by examining different cases of aphasia with
patients having damage to those areas. Our current understanding of the brain does not allow us to
be able to predict what the impact of damage to these areas are from patient to patient--it is
frequently witnessed that patients with damage in identical places to these areas have different
types of aphasia.

As a final note, Pinker makes a distinction between prescriptive
rules, such as grammatical rules that we are taught in school, and descriptive rules, the way people
actually talk. In response to the former, he makes a claim that using non-standard English such as
"I can't get no satisfaction" versus the standard English "I can't get any satisfaction" is not
wrong linguistically, as it is simply a different dialect with an internally consistent grammar. The
evident double-negative (which is "wrong" in standard English) is simply a remnant of Middle
English, where double-negatives were ubiquitous. As long as the grammatical rules of any language
are consistent and systematic, as in the seemingly wrong non-standard English, they follow the
descriptive rules and are linguistically correct.

Overall, The Language
Instinct is a great read for anyone even remotely interested in the topic. The scope is immense,
from basic linguistics, to language development, to language evolution, to genetics, to overall mind
design. In addition to being introduced to very important linguistic concepts, you will have an
amazing amount of entertaining examples to share in any setting.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Great book
Comment: I found this book to be an interesting and informative read. While I am interested in linguistics
(and thus was probably a bit more excited about the topic than the average person), I think this
book would also be enjoyable for anyone. Pinker writes in an understandable manner, mostly avoiding
linguistic jargon and always explaining complex topics in a generally understandable way.
/>Additionally, the latest edition includes a "P.S." addition at the end that incudes Q&A with
Pinker as well as a summary for each chapter of new advances that have been made since the book was
originally written--a nice addition to an already great book.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A fascinating, but somewhat thickly written story
Comment: We all talk. (Some of us more than others). But all humans -- barring a problem such as deafness
-- talk. Even our deaf friends talk by means of a complicated language of visual signs.
/>And Steven Pinker tells this story, the story of human language, and why it's so essential a part
of our humanity, well. Following Chomsky, he posits a universal language structure, an innate part
of our being who we are, and how small children grow quickly into complex grammatical and
syntactical structures.

And for the most part, this is a good read. My only
complaint is that on occasions, Dr. Pinker waxes a bit too eloquent, telling more information than
is needed for the argument, giving pages and pages of examples when one or 2 would do. But this is
a good introduction to the whole question of why and how we talk, and by inference how we think.

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