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

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Summary: An object lesson in brainwashing
Comment: People should read this book if only as an object lesson in how a racy style, a sometimes
condescending humour, and breadth of learning can lure readers into suspending their critical
judgement as well as their rationality. Others have already criticized Pinker for presenting a
controversial view as undisputed fact. But there is worse than this. The brilliance of the writing
conceals misleading accounts of research, elementary ignorance and patent nonsense, all in
connection with arguments that are central to Pinker's case. He tells us, for instance (pp.111-12)
that children are born with knowledge of a super rule that if their native language puts the verb
before the object, it will use prepositions, but that if it puts objects before verbs, it will use
postpositions. He does not reveal that there is a fair-sized minority of languages that do not
follow this `rule'. Another claim Pinker attaches great importance to is that children know
`innately' that we never use regular plurals in compounds such as "rat-eater"; children never say
"rats-eater". Italian parents' genes must be unaware of this, since their children grow up saying
"fruttivendolo", i.e. "fruits-seller", not "fruit-seller". But perhaps the author's most startling
assertion (p.43) is that natural languages do not form questions by flipping the first and last
words of a sentence or uttering it in mirror-reversed order. Most European languages, for a start,
do precisely these things, as in German: "Sie rauchen" - "Rauchen Sie?" ("You smoke" - "Do you
smoke?") Readers can find a development of these and other criticisms of the flaws in Pinker's book
in my LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT (1999, Intellect). They will also find there a demonstration of the
impossibility of Pinker's `mentalese', which he believes to be the language of thought.

Customer Rating:

Summary: An object lesson in brainwashing
Comment: People should read this book if only as an object lesson in how a racy style, a sometimes cruel
humour, and breadth of learning can lure readers into suspending their critical judgement as well
as their rationality. Others have already criticized Pinker for presenting a controversial view as
undisputed fact. But there is worse than this. The brilliance of the writing conceals misleading
accounts of research, elementary ignorance, and patent nonsense, all in connection with arguments
that are central to the author's case.

He tells us, for instance (pp.111-12), that children are
born with knowledge of a super rule that if their native language puts the verb before the object,
it will use prepositions, but if it puts objects before verbs, it will use postpositions. He does
not reveal that there is a fair-sized minority of languages that do not follow this
'rule'.

Another claim Pinker attaches great importance to is that children know 'innately' that
we never use regular plurals in compounds such as "rat-eater"; children never say "rats-eater"
(pp.146-47). Italian parents' genes must be unaware of this, since their children grow up saying
"fruttivendolo", i.e. "fruits-seller", not "fruit-seller".

But perhaps the author's most
startling assertion (p.43) is that natural languages do not form questions by flipping the first
and last words of a sentence or uttering it in mirror-reversed order. Most European languages, for
a start, do precisely this, as in German "Sie Rauchen / Rauchen Sie?" - "You smoke / Do you
smoke?"

Readers can find a development of these and other criticisms of the basic flaws in
Pinker's account of language in my book LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT (1999, Intellect). They will also
find there a demonstration of the impossibility of Pinker's mentalese, which he believes to be the
language of thought.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Informative and highly entertaining
Comment: I admit I am one of those guys who wants to know how language works. Everybody uses language every
day so it must be relatively simple, right? But of course it's not. For instance, I read a lot of
what Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote about language and although it does make a lot of sense, it didn't
really answer simple questions. As usual, simple questions turn out to be not that simple at all
but Steven Pinker manages to give many explanations for not-so-simple things which can be easily
understood by linguistic laymen like me. What's more, although the middle section gets a little
boring, most of the book is written in a very entertaining fashion. If it's true that many
scientists don't seem to have a good sense of humour, Steven Pinker is an exception to this rule
(as a former astrophysicist I can tell you the rule is true). He didn't answer some of the
questions I had but his most recent book "Words and Rules" dealt with those.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Who's it?
Comment: Haven't read the book, but wanted to add to the substantive discussion.

In playing a game of tag
as a child, didn't you ever ask, "Who's it?"

Customer Rating:

Summary: An accessible approach to a difficult topic
Comment: I've had a long running interest in language acquisition and the study of linguistics, and have read
many of the original works by authors like Chomsky. What Pinker does, whether you agree with his
conclusions or not, is to provide an excellent general overview of linguistic theories. Many
linguistic texts are DULL or tortuously difficult to read. Pinker is very clear and writes quite
well. He sometimes goes a bit overboard on his theory, but most of the time he's very convincing.
I have not yet read the other book referred to below, but look forward to it.

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