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

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Summary: One of the Most Important Books of the Century
Comment: This book will clearly be viewed in the future as one of the most important books of the 20th
century. Though dismissed with faint praise by many of the other reviewers, many of whom appear to
be professionals in the field that are threatened by his insights, Pinker's ideas will probably in
a few short years become the accepted viewpoint. And, besides having brains, he's pretty cute.

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Summary: Despite Excellent Arguments, Some Readers Miss the Point
Comment: This is a superb introduction to generative linguistics (both phonology and syntax). Pinker has
successfully simplified most of the complex methodological and notational issues to make these
somewhat opaque fields more accessible to lay readers. As such, this is an ideal introductory text
and a good reference for linguistic types who have had to forego the Ivory Tower but who want to
keep their feet wet. What this text is not is an advanced, graduate-level text--and so don't expect
that. If you've read any other book on generative theory (or better yet, minimalist theory), this
book is backstepping. (Note that the negative reviewers of this title are also showing off how
"advanced" they are--thereby missing the very point to this text!) On the other hand, if you're
fascinated by language at all, no matter the reason, you owe it to yourself to try this text out.
I have colleagues in non-linguistics fields of study (particularly literature) who don't understand
why language isn't static, why the idea of "grammaticality" changes over time--or that Black
Vernacular English and Sign Language are as well grammared as "standard" English. If you've been
curious about any of these issues or more--buy and read "The Language Instinct."

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Summary: Promotes the idea of a human nature without proving it
Comment: People who read this book have to have good education in philosophy (Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein)
to see through it. Pinker starts with "proving" that mental grammar is innate and ends up with
saying that there should be a common human nature that will make us all brothers. Why weren't we
brothers long ago then? This book is filled with similar silly thinking. I am so astonished that I
almost fell off the chair that this man can be considered an intellectual. It can only happen in
the US!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Entertaining, but deceptive
Comment: Pinker sure is an engaging writer, and his varied pop culture references demonstrate that he is no
dry academic. But beware that he also makes a living on misrepresentating "facts." For example, he
discusses a deaf child with deaf parents, claiming that the child, whose parents learned Ameslan
late in life, used his "language faculty" to correctly deduce the "right" grammar from his parents
faulty data. This is highly misleading: in fact, the child still showed a good amount of error,
and there was a strong correlation between the percentage of ungrammatical utterances from his
parents and the child's. The higher their error rate, the higher the child's. So all the study
really showed was that brains are excellent at finding patterns in a mess of data, *not* that the
alleged LAD is a factor in fixing the child's syntax, as suggested by principles & parameters
theory. But you won't get the whole story from Pinker. In fact, you get what seems to be a
purposefully misleading one.

A couple other minor quibbles. First, the phrase structure
grammar Pinker tentatively outlines is like none I've ever seen, or that any linguist would accept.
I suspect that's because Pinker was trying to make PSG look more presentable and "natural" than the
real thing. Then there's his statement: "Language is no more a social construct than walking."
Basically, he uses this outrageous and unsupported comparison to toss out any functional or social
aspect of a theory of language. This all stems from the rationalist ideal of social theories
completely divorced from the environment they take place in.

Of course, for a staunch
supporter of the Cartesian Chomsky, also at MIT, none of this is really surprising. It's just a
shame so many people are taken in by it.

Finally, note that Pinker is not a linguist, as
many people (at least one reviewer, anyway) seem to believe. He is a cognitive psychologist whose
main focus often seems to be in linguistics.

Customer Rating:

Summary: crisp, well-structured overview to language and speech
Comment: A comprehensive overview on how we learn language, how we speak and how we communicate by means of
sentences and words. A counterweight to the 60's and 70's environment focused learning theories and
invaluable by the authors clear intentions - he does not hide what he's going to teach you.

The
german translation (to which I refer) is very well done, too.

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