Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker

From Barnes & Noble

With wit, erudition, & the deft use of everyday examples of humor and wordplay, the author argues that language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution--like web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.

From the Publisher

In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

Atlantic Monthly

An exciting book, certain to produce argument.

New Scientist

Extremely important.

New York Times Book Review

A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book.

Boston Globe Book Review

An excellent book full of wit and wisdom and sound judgement.

New York Times Books of the Century

...[A] well-written, witty book that makes even the most difficult material accessible to average readers.

Publishers Weekly

A three-year-old toddler is ``a grammatical genius''--master of most constructions, obeying adult rules of language. To Pinker, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology psycholinguist, the explanation for this miracle is that language is an instinct, an evolutionary adaptation that is partly ``hard-wired'' into the brain and partly learned. In this exciting synthesis--an entertaining, totally accessible study that will regale language lovers and challenge professionals in many disciplines--Pinker builds a bridge between ``innatists'' like MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, who hold that infants are biologically programmed for language, and ``social interactionists'' who contend that they acquire it largely from the environment. If Pinker is right, the origins of language go much further back than 30,000 years ago (the date most commonly given in textbooks)--perhaps to Homo habilis , who lived 2.5 million years ago, or even eons earlier. Peppered with mind-stretching language exercises, the narrative first unravels how babies learn to talk and how people make sense of speech. Professor and co-director of MIT's Center for Cognitive Science, Pinker demolishes linguistic determinism, which holds that differences among languages cause marked differences in the thoughts of their speakers. He then follows neurolinguists in their quest for language centers in the brain and for genes that might help build brain circuits controlling grammar and speech. Pinker also argues that claims for chimpanzees' acquisition of language (via symbols or American Sign Language) are vastly exaggerated and rest on skimpy data. Finally, he takes delightful swipes at ``language mavens'' like William Safire and Richard Lederer, accusing them of rigidity and of grossly underestimating the average person's language skills. Pinker's book is a beautiful hymn to the infinite creative potential of language. Newbridge Book Clubs main selection; BOMC and QPB alternates. (Feb.)

Library Journal

Following fast on the heels of Joel Davis's Mother Tongue ( LJ 12/93) is another provocative and skillfully written book by an MIT professor who specializes in the language development of children. While Pinker covers some of the same ground as did Davis, he argues that an ``innate grammatical machinery of the brain'' exists, which allows children to ``reinvent'' language on their own. Basing his ideas on Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar theory, Pinker describes language as a ``discrete combinatorial system'' that might easily have evolved via natural selection. Pinker steps on a few toes (language mavens beware!), but his work, while controversial, is well argued, challenging, often humorous, and always fascinating. Most public and academic libraries will want to add this title to their collections.-- Laurie Bartolini, Lincoln Lib., Springfield, Ill.

New York Times Books of the Century

...[A] well-written, witty book that makes even the most difficult material accessible to average readers.

What People Are Saying

Noam Chomsky
"An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written."

Leila Gleitman
"Somebody finally got it right. Pinker's thoroughly modern, totally engaging book introduces lay readers to the science of language in ways that are irreverant and hilarious while coherent and factually sound."

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

 In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker reviews scientific research showing that language is an "instinct," wired into the human brain through the process of biological evolution. Some striking things follow from this.

Topics for Discussion

 1. All languages are "discrete combinatorial systems," which means they contain rules that combine basic symbols (as words) into an infinite number of different larger structures (such as sentences). Other such systems are rare, but they do exist. The genetic code of DNA-which serves as the basis for life on earth-is built in a similar way, allowing for the creation of a potential infinity of novel life forms.

Some other discrete combinatorial systems that humans possess are involved in aesthetic activities like music and dance. What is the relationship between the language instinct and these other aspects of the human mind? Is it likely that such systems emerged out of language, either through biological evolution or cultural development? Or could they have evolved independently? What sort of evidence would bear on this issue? (Chapters 3, 4, and 11)

2. The structures of speech and sign are constrained by biological mechanisms; they are not cultural innovations. Because of this, the complaint that people nowadays don't use English properly is quite bizarre. It would be like saying that birdsong has been gradually corrupted over the last several hundred years. But writing is a different story. Although it is plainly based on existing languages such as English, it is a cultural invention. Not all societies have it, and children require careful instruction in order to learn it. What is the proper role of "language mavens" in determining rules and standards of writing? How can scientific research on sentence comprehension and composition tell us how to improve the teaching of writing skills? (Chapters 7 and 12)

3. We are entranced by the idea of animals learning language, and popular movies and television shows are are populated with singing chimps, talking dolphins, and even the occasional loquacious horse. Pinker argues that from the standpoint of biology, attempting to teach one species the communicative system of another makes little sense. Trying to teach a human baby to sing like a bird or chatter like a monkey isn't likely to succeed, and would not tell us very much if it did.

Why are we so fascinated by the idea of talking animals? What is at stake-scientifically or socially-in the debate over the capacities of apes and other animals? How are these attempts to teach human language to non humans different from the study of the communications systems that animals use spontaneously in the wild? (Chapter 10 and 11)

4. Debates over the nature of the human mind have always been intimately related to our political, social, and religious views. Defenders of the claim that the mind is infinitely malleable, free from biological constraints, view this as an optimistic, liberal doctrine, while more biological perspectives - especially those informed by evolutionary theory - are seen by many as tainted by racism and sexism.

On the other hand, scholars such as the linguist Noam Chomsky have argued that the moral superiority of the empiricist view of the mind is far from clear. Historically, the notion that humans can be "shaped" in any manner that an authority chooses has been the premise behind many brutal and repressive activities. As Pinker puts it, a blank slate is a dictator's dream. Furthermore, a theory of the mind informed by evolutionary theory is actually inconsistent with the notion that there exist profound cognitive differences between human groups.

Should these ethical and political considerations be taken into account as we develop theories of the mind? How have they affected our way of thinking about these issues in the past? In particular, what motivations might have led people to the view that languages are cultural inventions that vary without limit or, alternatively, to believe that language is a species-specific biological instinct? (Chapters 1 and 13)

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

An Instinct to Acquire an Art

As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision. I am not referring to telepathy or mind control or the other obsessions of fringe science; even in the depictions of believers these are blunt instruments compared to an ability that is uncontroversially present in every one of us. That ability is language. Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each other's minds. The ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget what a miracle it is. So let me remind you with some simple demonstrations, Asking you only to surrender your imagination to my words for a few moments, I can cause you to think some very specific thoughts:

When a male octopus spots a female, his normally grayish body suddenly becomes striped. He swims above the female and begins caressing her with seven of his arms. If she allows this, he will quickly reach toward her and slip his eighth arm into her breathing tube. A series of sperm packets moves slowly through a groove in his arm, finally to slip into the mantle cavity of the female.

Cherries jubilee on a white suit? Wine on an altar cloth? Apply club soda immediately. It works beautifully to remove the stains from fabrics.

When Dixie opens the door to Tad, she is stunned, because she thought he was dead. She slams it in his face and then tries to escape. However, when Tad says, "I love you," she letshim in. Tad comforts her, and they become passionate, When Brian interrupts, Dixie tells a stunned Tad that she and Brian were married earlier that day. With much difficulty, Dixie informs Brian that things are nowhere near finished between her and Tad. Then she spills the news that Jamie is Tad's son. "My what?" says a shocked Tad.

Think about what these words have done. I did not simply remind you of octopuses; in the unlikely event that you ever see one develop stripes, you now know what will happen next. Perhaps the next time you are in a supermarket you will look for club soda, one out of the tens of thousands of items available, and then not touch it until months later when a particular substance and a particular object accidentally come together. You now share with millions of other people the secrets of protagonists in a world that is the product of some stranger's imagination, the daytime drama All My Children. True, my demonstrations depended on our ability to read and write, and this makes our communication even more impressive by bridging gaps of time, space, and acquaintanceship. But writing is clearly an optional accessory; the real engine of verbal communication is the spoken language we acquired as children.

In any natural history of the human species, language would stand out as the preeminent trait. To be sure, a solitary human is an impressive problem-solver and engineer. But a race of Robinson Crusoes would not give an extraterrestrial observer all that much to remark on. What is truly arresting about our kind is better captured in the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity, speaking a single language, came so close to reaching heaven that God himself felt threatened. A common language connects the members of a community into an information-sharing network with formidable collective powers. Anyone can benefit from the strokes of genius, lucky accidents, and trial-and-error wisdom accumulated by anyone else, present or past. And people can work in teams, their efforts coordinated by negotiated agreements. As a result, Homo sapiens is a species, like blue-green algae and earthworms, that has wrought far-reaching changes on the planet. Archeologists have discovered the bones of ten thousand wild horses at the bottom of a cliff in France, the remains of herds stampeded over the clifftop by groups of paleolithic hunters seventeen thousand years ago. These fossils of ancient cooperation and shared ingenuity may shed light on why saber-tooth tigers, mastodons, giant woolly rhinoceroses, and dozens of other large mammals went extinct around the time that modern humans arrived in their habitats. Our ancestors, apparently, killed them off.

Language is so tightly woven into human experience that it is scarcely possible to imagine life without it, Chances are that if you find two or more people together anywhere on earth, they will soon be exchanging words. When there is no one to talk with, people talk to themselves, to their dogs, even to their plants. In our social relations, the race is not to the swift but to the verbal — the spellbinding orator, the silver-tongued seducer, the persuasive child who wins the battle of wills against a brawnier parent. Aphasia, the loss of language following brain injury, is devastating, and in severe cases family members may feel that the whole person is lost forever.

This book is about human language. Unlike most books with "language" in the title, it will not chide you about proper usage, trace the origins of idioms and slang, or divert you with palindromes, anagrams, eponyms, or those precious names for groups of animals like "exaltation of larks." For I will be writing not about the English language or any other language, but about something much more basic: the instinct to learn, speak, and understand language. For the first time in history, there is something to write about it. Some thirty-five years ago a new science was born. Now called "cognitive science," it combines tools from psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and neurobiology to explain the workings of human intelligence. The science of language, in particular, has seen spectacular advances in the years since. There are many phenomena of language that we are coming to understand nearly as well as we understand how a camera works or what the spleen is for. I hope to communicate these exciting discoveries, some of them as elegant as anything in modern science, but I have another agenda as well.

The recent illumination of linguistic abilities has revolutionary implications for our understanding of language and its role in human affairs, and for our view of humanity itself. Most educated people already have opinions about language. They know that it is man's most important cultural invention, the quintessential example of his capacity to use symbols, and a biologically unprecedented event irrevocably separating him from other animals. They know that language pervades thought, with different languages causing their speakers...