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

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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: A cogent argument for the evolution of language
Comment: The Language Instinct is one of the best books I've read in quite a while. Pinker's writing is
clear, easy to follow, and well thought out. His sense of humor is insidious: just when I thought I
was mired in some abstruse concept with no hope of getting untangled, he would slip in a word, a
subtle reference, or a bit of seemingly out of place vernacular that always brought a smile to my
face, and often had me laughing out loud, but it never failed to show me the path out of the
briarpatch. I highly recommend this book and I plan to read his other works, as well. Were I
planning a dinner party and could invite anyone, Pinker would definitely make the short list.

Customer Rating:

Summary: This is a great book!
Comment: I'm reading The Language Instinct for a linguistics course. This is really interesting stuff and
very readable. I've learned some very interesting theories about how people learn languages, much
more plausible than the "we copy our parents" theory I was raised on.

But there's a lot more
than just how we learn language. This is about how we are constantly re-creating language, and
although the ideas are expressed in English, they apply to every spoken language.

Read it!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Fascinating, but certainly not "light reading"
Comment: This book was instructive, well written, fascinating, and mostly comprehensible. I say "mostly"
comprehensible because the detail required to discuss something as complex as language means that
the reader is asked to remember and understand all those school terms from writing class that most
of us quickly forget - case, nominative, accusative, prepositions, phonemes, indirect objects,
participles, auxiliaries, articles, determiners, intransitives, and the like. Fortunately, Pinker
is lucid and practical, providing a glossary (which is needed for repeated referral while slogging
through some parts of the book) and plenty of down to earth examples to demonstrate his points. He
makes a strong case for humans having a language instinct, and does so in a very engaging fashion.
I found the book entertaining and full of fun, a genial approach for the thoughtful ruminations
about the fascinating reality of language. I wasn't convinced by his arguments in chapter 11 on
'The Big Bang', but the rest of the book won me over. This book requires concentration to read and
determination to finish, but is well worth the effort to do both.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Fascinating stuff, and a fun read!
Comment: If you've come this far, I reckon you already know something about _The Language Instinct_. Either
that, or you're a linguist, in which case you might want to just skip ahead to the next reveiw. In
any event, I'm not going to waste time telling you what this book is about - you probably already
know.

It's hard to imagine anything more boring than a book about linguistics, except possibly a
book about linguistics written by an MIT professor. A friend had to literally stick this book in my
face to get me to read it. And I'm mighty glad he did!

From the start, the Pinker makes it
clear that he's speaking to a non-technical audience, but he does it without condescension or
dumbing down the subject matter. His wonderful use of examples and wit help to cement the ideas.
And the depth of the concepts he discusses leaves the reader pondering these matters well after the
book's back on the shelf.

My copy sits on my desk at work as a reference. I've lent it to more
people than any other book I own, save _Bored of the Rings_. And best of all, when your friends
see you reading this they think you're an intellectual!

- Bill Thacker

Customer Rating:

Summary: I only wish the book was here when I studied linguistics.
Comment: A very thorough and thought provoking book. As a former linguistics student, I can honestly say that
it would have been very useful to me when I studied linguistics at the Univ. of Alberta in Canada.
Pinker can clarify complex subjects like few other people. Congrats Prof. Pinker for a well written
and useful book.

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