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

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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Understanding language - fascinating, and vital for writers!
Comment: Steven Pinker has written a fascinating account of how language works; how we, as listeners, process
the sounds that make up words and sentences in a way that allows us to extract meaning. The book is
clear, entertaining and very accessible; Pinker's writing style is witty and engaging.
/>My appreciation of the book is not only as a reader and enthusiast of language, but also as a
writer; despite having been writing for years, and having studied numerous books on writing style
and technique, it is "The Language Instinct" that positively impacted my writing more than anything
else that I've read; an understanding (at least a partial one - I'm no expert) of the way your words
will be parsed by the brain of your reader can be very valuable in one's attempt to write clearly
and well.

I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning
something new, and being entertained in the process.

Danny Iny
Author of
"Ordinary Miracles - Harness the power of writing and get your point across!" (ISBN 1-4116-7252-6)

Customer Rating:

Summary: Packed with Facts and Tidbits of Knowledge
Comment:
This book contains a massive amount of information per chapter, unless this is your area
study, every page will reveal new territory. While the author is busy proving that infants are born
with an innate instinct to verbally communicate, facts and interesting tidbits are being offered to
the reader. The opposing thought to this book is the idea of the mind as a blank slate, that
children come into the world and must absorb everything. The author cites numerous studies whereby
infants are thought to have an innate idea of objects and number, objects and motion, and are driven
to absorb the language of their culture. The result is language is universal to all human cultures,
and the language structures are very closely related. This book has spurred me onto pursue Steven
Pinker's other writings. One drawback of the book was the sentence diagramming section which was a
little too long and overdone. The author provides plenty of ammunition about the language mavens.
These self-righteous protectors of the English language that decry its downfall when the language is
being used in the common manner. The average speaker on the street because of this innate language
instinct can always make himself understood and possesses a sophisticated logic that harks back to
when the person was an enfant. Very well written, very informative.

Customer Rating:

Summary: The perfect balance
Comment: Pinker presents the argument for generative grammar clearly, yet not in any sort of layman's
fashion. He makes you aware of the infinite things you never knew you knew about the English
language. You leave this book feeling smart and inquisitive, not to mention with a heartfelt
admiration for the author.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Underlining almost every line!
Comment: Pinker is one of the most consistently interesting writers of this kind of popularized science, and
I find myself exclaiming at every page over some wonderful tidbit, surprise, or insight. I underline
and check off the most interesting and thought-provoking bits--unfortunately, my copy is now so
heavily underlined that it looks like one of those high-school texts where the student, determined
to underline key points, has underlined basically every other line! But I can't help it--this guy's
stuff is just too interesting! Although if I miss my stop one more time, I'm going to stop reading
it on the BART on the way to work in the mornings!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Nothing short of a masterpiece
Comment: I'm not that easy to please, but if a book deserves a five-star rating, this is it.
/>Pinker is a gifted writer with a keen sense of humour and an extraordinary ability to organize a
large mass of information in such a way that it can be made sense of by someone who expects to
actually enjoy reading a non-fiction book. That's not to say that it oversimplifies things so as to
reach a larger audience: it's an intelligent, well-researched work for people who have a brain and a
critical sense.

Some linguists may discount this book as not sufficiently scholarly
just because it's written in a digestible, straightforward manner, rather than full of ten-line
sentences with complex nested structures and dubious words that lend so many other books an air of
pseudo-erudition.

Indeed, this book seems to be deceptively easy to read: my fellow
reviewer who wrote the entry posted on July 31, 1999, which currently heads this list, obviously
favours the pompous style I so detest, but his comments show that he completely and utterly misses
Pinker's point.

If you're one of those people who feel important reading an article or
book that says "Methodological observation of the sociometrical behaviour tendencies of prematurated
isolates indicates that a casual relationship exists between groundward tropism and lachrymatory
behaviour forms" instead of "Children cry when they fall down", then this book is not for you. On
the other hand, if you believe that a high-calibre scientific text can be both clear and enjoyable,
here's an outstanding addition for your personal library.

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