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

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Customer Rating:

Summary: Clarifying
Comment: The blurbs are accurate. No worries. Go ahead. Just one thing: linguistics itself less racy
methinks.

Customer Rating:

Summary: "Mentalese" does not a perspective make!
Comment: How'd you like that grammar, Mr. Pinker? Perhaps you'd like to analyze it for me. If you did, I
still don't think you'd understand what I meant. That's the problem - the brain doesn't create
language, it processes language. You don't understand the sun by studying the things it shines its
light on.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Excellent but wrong
Comment: I'm no linguist myself, but Pinker's logical analysis is so weak that an alert reader's conclusion
inevitably is: he must be wrong. A common strategy to be convincing is to list all possible theories
and to eliminate all but one with supporting facts. Pinker comes up with one single theory, that
grammar is genetically determined, and he then lists loads of facts, that happen to be consistent
with that theory. However, alternative explanations are hardly discussed, and none is convincingly
refuted. At the same time, there are problems with genetically determined grammar, that he doesn't
bother to talk about.

If there had been good arguments for a genetically determined grammar, I'm
sure Pinker would have mentioned them, so I consider this book a very good indication that the
theory is a wild guess at best.

Still, Pinker is an excellent stylist, and his collection of facts
is extremely interesting taken individually. For these reasons alone the book is well worth reading.

Customer Rating:

Summary: We possess language and it possesses us!!
Comment: A good friend with whom I was discussing language urged me to read this book. I must say that I was
captivated from the first sentence. Other reviewers have mentioned that this is not a book for
everyone and I agree - much of the science and terminology of the linguists is beyond me - and I
consider myself fairly well educated. When Pinker steers clear from mucking up the story with
in-depth explanations of word placements and whatnot - it is a brilliant treatise on this marvelous
"instinct" - the ability of human beings to learn and use language.
Pinker sets out to view
language as a characteristic (like the elephant's trunk) that simply happens to be unique to this
species (which is why the "sign language using" apes in our society are little more than farces). I
think I loved most of all the convincing examples he uses to support his argument. Whether it was
about the deaf children of hearing parents who learn a fluent sign language, or the aphasics, or
disproving the Eskimo `hoax' (they don't have 100s of words for snow), or the simple support of a
language "gene" - and a description of what he calls, "mentalese" - I was hooked. Although I
suspect that this book was meant to be used as a college textbook - the fact remains that if you are
interested in language and the human abilities to learn it, manipulate it, process it, and
communicate with it - then this is a wonderful book.

Customer Rating:

Summary: The Landcape of Language and Mind - Explored with Wonder
Comment: Language is thought to be the one characteristic that separates us from the rest of the animal
kingdom, the one skill that humans have and other animals just don't.

Pinker, one of the
acknowledged greats in the 30-year-young field of linguistics, explores the ability of humans to
think and to communicate in language from a variety of angles and with reference to many different
fields of study.

Topics covered include: - the structure/grammar of language and for
comparative languages - the 'correctness' of standard American English and self-designated
"language mavens". - structures and regions of the brain which seem to control our ability to speak
- observations on the relationship between age and learning language - evolutionary theory and
how come only humans can talk? - universal characteristics of all human cultures and all human
grammars - animals who have been trained to "talk"

Pinker may or may not be 100% right, but his
thinking is clear-headed and his view of humanity is refreshing, in that it is both broad enough to
cover every speaking (human) culture, and specific enough to rely on individually observed and
experimental evidence in describing the ways we learn.

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