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

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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Well written, Informative - this book is not a light read.
Comment: Contrary to Pinkner's statement in his preface "this book is meant for everyone" this book is not a
layman's read. Those who are linguist, lexicographers, grammarians and, the syntaxes word lovers
will appreciate this work. At the core of Pinkner's' book is his defense of his thesis that
language is biologically based. Well written, highly informative, book on the science of language.
Conditionally recommended

Customer Rating:

Summary: A marvelous and beautifully written work.
Comment: I can't say I know enough about linguistics to offer any deep "academic" criticism of this book, but
I will say this: I simply couldn't put it down. Pinker's writing style sweepingly breezes through
the mind, and the deep insights he offers are often presented with a smile.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Pinker is obviously right!
Comment: I do not understand how other reviewers could say Pinker's idea has not been proved. It seems to me
that Pinker's thesis is obviously correct, by definition.let me explain. just think about the
complexity of language learning and understanding. Every computer scientists, who tries making a
computer capable of understanding, knows two things for sure: 1.some abilities must be given as
INNATE. Every programme must be based on some innate rules to work, such as the concept of time, of
motion, of cause and effect. 2. The problem of understanding complex language is a computationally
DIFFICULT one, because you have to examine many patterns , which may or may not be connected to each
other, and if they are, the programme has to find the general rule to which they obey, via
"abstraction" , or more precisely via a process called "induction". The computer program must also
discard all the meaningless common patterns between the data samples : for example when you'll hear
the word BALL and you see a red ball falling on the ground, after been thrown by a kid, the
programme must understand that the colour of the ball doesn't matter, the effect that it is falling
doesn't matter, that the kid doesn't matter. He can do that only after seeing many samples, and has
to be capable of abstraction, induction. This capability is needed just for understanding the
meaning of nouns, not to talk about the many other parts of the sentence, and what is more
important, the structure of the sentence. So language understanding and world understanding are very
complex problems, and the brain, although it is very slow in many other problems, solves those
problem perfectly. This is very suspicious. Why do they solve those problems so efficiently? Many
computer scientists will say: because the computers are sequential machines, and brains are mainly
parallel computational machines, which are especially suited for that kind of problems, such as
pattern recognition. But this answer is wrong, because DOG's brains are also parallel machines, but
dogs don't understand language, apart from single words that any neural network can understand. So,
Why is that? obviously, there must be something in the STRUCTURE of the brain - that is unique to
humans- that helps understanding language. And what in the world can account for the body
structure, the brain structure? Genes. What else? That is true by definition. Genes are the only
thing that can account for the structural our body. So Pinker's thesis is nothing more than
tautology, in my opinion. Obviously, many reviewers don't think it is tautology, so I must conclude
that I have not understood their point very well, so I apologise for simplifying things too much.
Please let me know what you think. I also have not finished the book so far.

Maurizio Colucci
seguso@tiscalinet.it

Customer Rating:

Summary: simply brilliant
Comment: "The Language Instinct" is probably the most enjoyable book that I have ever read about language.
From start to finish, the author entertained while skilfully carving out a compelling case for why
he believes that man has a unique gift for language learning. Whether you are a linguist, a
sociologist, a neurologist, a language lover, or a fan of popular culture, there is something in
this book for you. Pinker is erudite and eclectic, covering everything from Chomsky, grammar genes,
children's language, Creoles, aphasics and the origin and evolution of language, to George Bush,
Gary Larsen, Woody Allen, the Hill Street Blues, the Sapir-Whorf Great Eskimo Hoax, and Orwellian
Newspeak. I liked this book not just because of the excellent way that Pinker presented his
scientific argument, but also because of its richness about language and life in general. If there
were one person that I could choose to invite to a cocktail party, it would be Steven Pinker. Do I
believe everything he writes? Of course not!

Customer Rating:

Summary: an interesting take on language and learning
Comment: The idea of an innate human understanding of language is pretty controversial in academic circles so
don't take this without a grain of salt, but... I found Language Instinct very readable, and full of
excelent examples. In particular the discussion of pidgin vs. creole languages and how quickly fully
gramatical languages show up even when no "teacher" is available is striking. It definitely makes
you think about the changes that take place in young brains as they pick up language cues, as well
as, the seeming universals in the variety of those languages. Pinker ends with a more speculative
discussion of how the brain may be thought of as a set of interacting problem solving tools, evolved
over millions of years.

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