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

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Summary: Some good kernels in an awful lot of chaff
Comment: This book has some good things to think about. The problem is Pinker has presented some very
debatable opinions as absolute proven fact. So, to find the good stuff, you've got to sort through
a lot of not-so-good. This was the first thing of Pinker's I've read, and to be honest, I was
surprised to find that a man with such a high reputation could be so bombastic in stating his pet
theories. I was really underimpressed.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Pinker delivers a (Chomsky's) point.
Comment: I rate this book the maximum because it contains a seminal point. One that, once assimilated,
enriches a person's understanding of reality. Language (singular) in general, not specific languages
(plural), is an innate, genetically induced behavior in our species. Pinker's predecessor Noam
Chomsky hit upon this notion and Pinker has taken up the torch in this book describing specifically
what Chomsky originally formulated. Languages (plural), such as Mandarin Chinese and Castillian
Spanish are not innate but arbitray. On the other hand the language ability (singular) is not
arbitrary but a highly innate neural mode of cognizing and communicating which is generated by
Wernicke's, Broca's, and other neuronal groups in the brain. In short, language is an innate genetic
function of our hominid bodies, much as flying is to sea gulls. It's an instinct. Pinker proves
this over and over in this book by citing experimental data, negative control pathology examples,
and other analogies in the real world (such as the language behavior of the deaf). Knowing that
language is a genetically induced, innate instinct helps one to cut through a lot of other fluff
about consciousness, language, the animal kingdom, etc., which allows for more rapid passage from
the premises of animal behavior to conclusions about their causes and effects.

This book is also
not a bad science read in general, If you can get past the stuffiness of the grammarian (a few pots
of coffee won't hurt) some excellent, very relevent points are made along the way. Beside the
primary and most valuable thesis of this book, that language (singular....not languages, plural) is
a genetic event in the same vein as eye color, Pinker makes the sagacious observations that BEV
(black english vernacular) is as bonified a language as continental French or Castillian Spanish; a
useful tool to have when debating racists. We also soon find, thanks to Pinker's excellent
linguistic knowledge base, that there is no 'proper usage' in the cultural employment of language.
Like many cultural phenomena, morals, fashion, etc., language is defined by statistical (popular)
usage. It's funny and fitting to see Pinker's dishing of language mavens who lament the degradation
of the current King's language. Why if this were the case, we'd still be speaking colonial era
English. While language (singular) may be a genetically coded biological phenomenon in our species,
individual languages (plural) are diverse, dynamic, evolving, and everything but static.

The
laying out of the rules of grammer in this book can get quite tedious, but the book's most redeeming
feature is that it drives home the very pertinent biological axiom about human behavior in terms of
our linguistic activity, with some nice sidebars on insider linguistics jargon. It's this type of
science writing that enriches the lay reader and makes being a bibliophile a healthy addiction.

Customer Rating:

Summary: highly enjoyable but too chomskyan
Comment: pinker is one of the most fun-to-read popular science authors currently on the scene (how the mind
works and words and rules are also enjoyable, tho w&r less so than either lg instinct or htmw).
therefore, his book is a good place to start for the person interested in language and linguistics
but with little or no background.

for those with little background, tho, some of the going may get
a bit rough, as pinker goes fairly deep into one particular theory of language, closely related to
the ideas of pinker's MIT colleague noam chomsky. while i respect both pinker and chomsky, i find
both of them to pay far too little attention to how languages change over time and to how 'exotic'
languages like navajo, finnish, and ingush work.

chapter 12 provides a pretty good (tho
occasionally angry) antidote to people who insist on answering 'can i go to the bathroom?' with 'i
don't if you can, but you may'.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Inspirational
Comment: The enlightened Stephen Pinker delivers a masterful compendium on linguistic theory that is truly
enjoyable to read. His fine use of wit and literary fluency makes this book very enjoyable and
emulates the great Richard Dawkins in the way that it seeks (and succeeds) in reaching the layman,
the student, and the academician. To put it bluntly, I had never been interested in Linguistics.
It seemed to be a stuffy field of repetition of high school "grammar". When assigned to read this
book for a Cognitive Development Psychology course, I approached it with dread. It turned out to be
the highlight of my current academic quarter. Pinker, using clean evidence to back his claims,
makes some wonderful assertions about Linguistics. This book, couched in the fascinating field of
evolutionary psychology, does a good job of explaining the formation and foibles of a Universal
Language. He justly attacks the ridiculously ingrained Standard Social Science Model of Language
and delivers a cohesive explanation from a Psychologically oriented perspective. Unlike what most
critics state, Pinker does NOT say that genes are the only basis of language, but rather supports
the fundamental basis of evolutionary psychology. It goes a bit like this: the environment of our
hunter-gatherer ancestors selected for certain genes to proliferate. These genes code us to
synthesize certain proteins at certain times in our development to form certain physiological
mechanisms (arms, lungs, brain, etc). Of these, he argues that the brain is not a general purpose
processing tool but rather a domain specific one with an appropriate "Language Center". This causes
us to have an innate mechanism for language and, therefore, an innate "Mentalese" and a Universal
Grammar. HOWEVER - he also says that culture is necessary!! Without culture, one could never learn
the particulars of their own language and, after a certain developmental threshold, would be without
any specific language.

I apologize for the length of this endorsement. It just seemed that some
possible, deconstructive critiques could seem compelling without some understanding of what Pinker
was really getting at - the inherent beauty of human language and our "instinct" for it. So, if you
skimmed this recommendation, know only this: "THIS BOOK IS WONDERFUL AND COVERS A GREAT RANGE AND
DEPTH OF LINGUISTICS. A FUN AND INSPIRATIONAL READ".

Customer Rating:

Summary: One entrance to an inexhaustible subject.
Comment: As a "descriptive-linguist-observer-scientist," Pinker makes a number of observations about human
development and language that are of interest but few that seem all that penetrating or edifying.
(Tell me things, Stephen, that I didn't already know or couldn't easily have figured out for
myself.) Moreover, he never, to my mind, establishes a clear distinction between thought and
language (assuming there is one), so that in effect he seems to be saying little more than all human
beings are born with the capacity to "think," to interpret their own experience. Finally, one
wishes he could complement his scientific curiosity with a "theological" or critical one as well.
The Gospel of John asserts that in the beginning was the "Word," which became human. If language,
then, can be claimed as a "gift," as our spiritual inheritance, then it follows that language is
capable of being "abused," possibly even wasted. What counts equally as much as the phenomenon of
language is the way it is organized, codified, and reinvented by humans. If all cultures and
civilizations have had the same access to "language," not all have exhibited the same responsiveness
(as Shakespeare's, for example) to "rhetoric" and its potential to the fullest realization of the
world of self. I wonder why this is--but I doubt that Pinker, for all his enthusiastic
descriptivism, gives the question much thought.

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