Pinker's (and by extension, Chomsky's) evidence for
Universal Grammar has been disputed by professional linguists for decades. Actually, for a thinking
individual, coming up with counter-examples - which are sometimes quite easily produced - makes
one wonder just how seriously anyone should take the nativist claims. For a short example (since
this forum is not meant to be a forum for academic rebutal) on p. 30: Pinker claims a speaker of
Standard American English (SAE) would never try the following contractions:

Yes he is! -> Yes
he's!

I don't care what you are -> I don't care what you're.

Who is it? -> Who's it?

Pinker
hints that one does not find these contractions in SAE since they violate rules of Universal
Grammar which are part of the bioligical make-up of the mind! How astonishing, since I always
thought the much more simple and elegant explanation would be that one does not contract a word
which one wants to emphasize - in the first case, "Yes, he is!" is an affirmation of something
previously thought not to be the case, and as such the "is" gets re-affirmed and highlighted.

But of course, I am a speaker of SAE, and didn't find the third example to sound that odd (Who's
it?) Since I say it all the time when someone calls and someone else answers the phone and tells
me that the phone is for me. Or if the phone isn't for me, I often ask "Who's that?"

I would
suggest any reader, who takes the time, can come up with several counter examples on their own.
Such as: Where is that? -> Where's that? --

In this case, and so many others presented in "The
Language Instinct" Pinker presents only the positive side of the debate, many times leaving out the
details, since he knows full well the devil resides there!

For a populist account (and a very
readable one, I may add, beats Chomsky's, "Language and Problems of Knowledge" in readability by a
LONG SHOT!) "The Language Instinct" is a good read. However, if one is going to limit his or
herself to reading popular accounts rather than the arguments of profesional linguists, I highly
recommend the short and equally readable rebutal by the British scholoar, Geoffrey Sampson,
"Educating Eve"

In conclusion: The claim that humans have language genes which impose an
underlying grammar on all human languages (both present and extinct) is a bold claim. In my
opinion, the evidence does not follow from ANYTHING offered by Pinker or any of his nativist
colleges, or by the head master himself, Noam Chomsky. Certainly such claims should be taken with
the same seriousness and skepticism as claims about intellegence being racially determined. Whereas
the former is a rather innocuous belief and the later not- the evalutation of the claims should be
equally rigourous.

The book is well written and readable, but after you have read it, read
"Educating Eve" if you still have reservations or simply want to get another view!

Sincerly Kent
Slinker

The highlights of this book are what
linguists have been saying ever since Bloomfield: language change is natural, there's no such thing
as "right" or "wrong" grammar or pronunciation, only what is conventional, and so on. It's
encouraging to see someone, even a non-linguist, writing a book that says that kind of
thing.

As an outline of generative linguistics or, more specifically, Chomskyan linguistics
with all its psychological baggage (innateness and all that), it's decent. I must admit seeing the
same old stuff rehashed nearly prompted me to give up here and there, but that won't be a problem
for neophytes.

Still, "best introduction to generative grammar out there"? Ugh. God save
us. The "hurrahs" and one-sided nature of this book, which bothered reviewers even in pro-Chomsky
journals, will, I think, give readers a biased opinion about what linguistics is about and, more
important, what linguists think they know. (Pinker has a penchant for claiming we know more than
we actually do.) Whatever happened to encouraging skepticism and the tentative nature of scientific
claims?

The last chapter is interesting, as Pinker, all the while admitting that people
will think he's nuts, outlines an outrageously nativist theory of the mind, a precursor to _How
the Mind Works_. Pinker practically says that genes determine how long you suck your thumb (I
wonder what held him back). Well, you were right, Pinker, some of us think you're a little
nuts.

Amusing, informative, yes. In the meantime, some of us are waiting for someone in
the Langacker/Lakoff camp who can actually write...

(To the well-meaning but misinformed reader
who accused the "professionals in the field" of being "threatened by his insights": You're about
thirty years late. Pinker's "insights" have been orthodox, especially on the East Coast, for a long
time.)