The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

I have barely started it but I'm loving it already. I'll be back with a much more enriched review once I've finished it.

Now that I have finished it (about two weeks ago) I can finally write something more about it.

To begin with, I must confess I have had a few troubles finishing this book, but simply because I've fallen so in love with it that it really cost me a lot to end it.

The Language Instinct has definitely made it to the top three list of my all time favorite books. Written in an informative yet accessible way, every chapter both a new discovery, a challenge and a new adventure, The Language Instinct is the equivalent of an erudite yet enjoyable travel companion who entertains rather than lectures the reader with its knowledge.

And just like the end of a pleasant journey, it is deeply sad to finally reach the last page. At the same time, just like every formative experience in life, when you finally reach the end cover, you walk away from The Language Instinct enriched in mind and spirit.

Original Review: Clearly written, interspersed with Yiddish idioms, insightful and perhaps most importantly convincing account of how we acquired a unique and instinctive ability to speak (but not read or write, which must me explicitly learned) using "discrete combinatorial grammar." What is truly baffling is that this grammar seems to be universal to all humans. This book is inspiring me to learn more about the current research in linguistics. Highly recommended.

3 Jan 2015 update: After speaking with a person who has done a lot of work in computational linguistics (thanks Bob) and examining some of the central claims in this books more carefully, I must admit that I am no longer persuaded by Pinker's arguments. This is very disappointing to me as I am apparently too easily convinced by eloquent prose. I still think the book contains some interesting nuggets, which is why I am updating my rating from 5 to 3 stars.

First of all, I am not a big fan of Steven Pinker. I found How the mind works erroneous on many accounts. That said, The Language Instinct is despite its uncompromising MIT cognitivist stance a fun and interesting read. To me, even the title reveals a general error; i.e. How the Mind Creates Language. The mind does not create language; human beings create language in an inter-subjective way. (Compare: brains do not think (except as metaphorical speech, not suitable for scientific writing) people think.) So be on your guard and do not accept mr. Pinker's arguments without reflecting upon them. This book is full of interesting facts and stories, but I would recommend anyone to pick up a copy of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations after having read Pinker in order to get a glance of the complicated reality outside the cognitivist nimbus cloud.

Pinker breaks through the superficiality of language to touch on something deep inside all of us.
He gives a language lesson that isn't boring at all.
I have been reminded in my daily life of many observations made in the book.
The thesis of the book is simple and well defended throughout:
Human language is an instinct.
Vague aspects of human language, like communication and symbolism are common in the animal kingdom.
But each different human language is a quirky, fanciful creation.
And the drive to generate these languages is instinctual.

To my glee, Pinker demonstrates stupidity of "linguistic determinism".
He also defends the sensibility of English spelling, and legitimacy of Ebonics grammar.

He does a bit of underhanded trash-talking to so-called "language mavens".
It's nice to clear up linguistic mistakes, but he might have gone a little too far by naming names and levying insults.
But if I were him, I'd probably be frustrated, too.

Most importantly for me, I found myself trusting Pinker for his constant practice of backing up his claims with solid evidence, usually in the form of multiple language examples or simple try-it-yourself language experiments.

This review could be long or short. I wasn't sure if I wanted to waste the time, but it's a long book and there are some seriously interesting and seriously stupid things in it. It centers on the issue of language as learned or as instinct, which can be so fine an issue that most people really won’t care. For the short: it's very nice to see so much research on language presented and Pinker does a good job of explaining the often oversimplified theory that there is a genetic basis for understanding language (parts are probably split between your genetic code, but there is no one gene that controls all of it). But there is also some will-meltingly stupid material, like arguments that we can't have standards in our language because we can't judge whale songs and programming a useful speaking device wouldn't include commands like "don't split infinitives" because a screwdriver doesn't split infinitives. As he tries to illuminate how the brain creates language, the book is pretty interesting. As he tries to enforce his values, like that we shouldn't have any aesthetic consideration, he's worthless.

Okay. That's the short one. Here’s a longer one.

Pinker's central argument does nothing for me. That argument is that we have an instinct for creating language. You can construct sentences without thinking about the structure, and even when you babble you have a sense of when to pause for verbal grammar. Think of kids picking up swearing just by hearing it – they aren’t instructed in how to use it, but figure it out logically and intuitively. Since I already believe in this instinct and it seems pretty obvious that we do have it, an argument that it exists isn't impressive, though it was nice of him to collect so many anecdotes and studies that illustrate it to be the case. The best parts of the book are studies that show how versatile people are with language, like children picking up Pidgin or nonsense and converting them, within one generation, into grammatically sound modes of communication.

The whole matter is kind of a bunk argument. Either our brains have an instinct for picking up and creating language, or we created languages that our brains are capable of picking up and using. If you think about it on those terms for so much as a minute, you'll get how silly the debate is. At best, both are partially true: we generate and imitate modes of expression that our brains can use readily. From the creation standpoint, why wouldn't we make something that's pretty close to what our brains can handle with unconscious ease? And from the instinct standpoint, why wouldn't we have instincts of some strength or other for the things that are created from inside our heads?

Do we think about language or use it unconsciously? It’s obvious that we do both, though we wing it more than we plot it. It’s not an either/or problem, and that Pinker misses this almost entirely is sad. Parents help teach their children and foster language, from obvious examples like imparting the names for things and spelling of words, to what’s been found in recent scientific studies (not in this book) examining mastery of language in children who come from households with differing amounts of speech. Every day you probably struggle for words and consciously choose what to say at least some of the time – you know there is a conscious component to speech. There is unconscious and conscious education that he simply disregards because he's arguing for this instinct. Pinker choosing a side here feels like he's doing it for attention, and it's not as though this is the only time (in this book or academia in general) where it feels like his decision was unnecessary to the pursuit of truth.

His side-arguments can get annoying. Sometimes he seems downright condescending on the intelligence of children and the deaf, and often he seems to skim rather than analyze evidence when it suits his arguments. For instance in the case of a Simon, a deaf boy whose deaf parents had improper signing that he did not pick up, Pinker makes serious assumptions about what he must have done with no evidence or even interviews with the boy in question to verify the conclusions. It’s not even anecdotal at that point; it’s conjecture, which does not belong next to the real research on Simon’s case. Conjecture is essential in analysis, but not like this, and not in making the ironclad decisions about the way minds work as Pinker does.

By far his silliest argument is in favor of descriptivism over prescriptivism. Descriptivism is the school that describes how people speak; prescriptivism deals with how people ought to. Here, like in the bunk argument over using a language consciously or unconsciously, most intelligent people understand that language functions best when we mediate between the descriptive and prescriptive influences, changing the rules to better suit some things, but sticking to them for others. Being a scientist who observes, Pinker is interested in descriptivism as it shows the most about how we are inclined to speak and act in language. But being foolishly inclined to polar positions, he argues that we ought to only follows descriptivism and does it in downright stupid ways, like saying that we don't need a speaking machine is programmed to "not split infinitives" because screwdrivers already don't split infinitives. That’s moronic and if his opposition made a similar rhetorical move he would never allow it. His conclusions are that whatever we “get” by the language instinct should make up all the prescriptive rules, and that whatever we don’t make should constitute the rest. You know, in the way that we eat whatever tastes good, think whatever we like regardless of objective evidence and live in total anarchy without any government. Okay, those three examples are stupidity on my own part, but that’s what this pure-descriptive argument deserves. It comes from his oversimplified approach to language cognition, at first pretending that people don’t think or act in their education of language, and now proceeding that we shouldn’t think about how we’re going to use it or apply intentional value. That he quotes a Shakespearian character in defense his of anti-prescriptive campaign when that author taught writing seals the deal.

Now before Pinker's fans get angry over the rating alone, if you hold your mouse button over the stars you see that each correlates to a statement. One star means "I didn't like it," and for the fascinating research in the book, Pinker became too annoying and questionable at too many points for me to like his book. So it gets one star because, you see, they have prescribed meaning and are not just whatever you want them to be.

استیون پینکر احتمالاً مهم‌ترین ترویج‌دهنده‌ی زبان‌شناسی چامسکیایی است. در کتاب غریزه‌ی زبان او برای توضیح توانایی بشر برای تکلم مقدماتی از حوزه‌های مختلف زبان‌شناسی مانند دستور زبان، واژه‌شناسی، آواشناسی، یادگیری زبان، زبان‌شناسی تاریخی و عصب‌شناسی زبان را بیان می‌کند. فصل یکی مانده به آخر به نقد برخی دیدگاه‌های رایج به زبان، به‌خصوص دیدگاهی که زبان را به علت تحولات طبیعی‌اش در معرض نابودی قریب‌الوقوع می‌بیند، اختصاص داده شده است. فصل آخر نیز بیانگر انتقادهایی است که پینکر با تکیه بر زبان‌شناسی چامسکیایی بر تفکری رایج در علوم اجتماعی وارد می‌داند که انسان را موجودی کاملاً فرهنگی و فاقد ذاتی ثابت و جهانی فرض می‌کند. از آن جا که کتاب برای مخاطب عمومی نگاشته شده، چگالی اطلاعات آن در مقایسه با کتاب‌های تخصصی کمتر است و مسائل با حوصله و شوخ‌طبعی بیشتری توضیح داده شده‌اند. بنابراین این کتاب را می‌توان به هر آن کس توصیه کرد که می‌خواهد آشنایی مختصری با پدیده‌ی زبان و ارتباط آن با حوزه‌های گوناگون دانش بشری پیدا کند.

This book is a prime example of why Pinker's a great non-fiction writer!! It begins with a bare bones introduction to language. Then somehow, he puts in how children learn language. Naturally, he turns into a drunken intellectual with great finesse when hammering the Grammar Police after hours. And finishes us off with a lesson in biology ^.^ What a ride!

I'll review this one and link it here too!! So much to say, goodness, what's the top 10 for this gem?! I've already got the perfect movie recommendation too! It's a natural!

My bad, my super late linking of the review:
http://www.biblioatlas.com/2017/08/th...
The review has the recommended movie at the very bottom with the recommended resources ^.^

Muito bom para entender como funciona a linguagem no nosso cérebro. Foi publicado no Brasil como O Instinto da Linguagem, mas não faço ideia do como fizeram isso, já que boa parte do livro explica a língua inglesa, de fonemas a como os verbos são conjugados.

Pinker é um dos fundadores e um dos maiores nomes na área de cognição e linguagem e o livro deixa bem claro o que ele trouxe. A comparação entre várias línguas, como crianças aprendem a falar, o que acontece com quem aprende uma segunda língua ou quem aprende a primeira depois de adulto, além do pensamento evolutivo, foram todas formas de estudo que ajudaram a explicar muito de como falamos.

Acredito que este foi o primeiro ou um dos primeiros livros do Pinker a dar o tom de psicologia evolutiva para o estudo do cérebro. Fica bem evidente que ainda estavam começando nesse pensamento. Aliás, fica bem evidente pelo livro todo que era o começo de um novo jeito de pensar. Ele está bem defasado por ter sido escrito na década de 1990, já que é uma área avançando a passos largos. A versão que ouvi ainda tinha comentários feitos em 2011 atualizando alguns capítulos e mesmo essa parte já está defasada.

Mesmo assim a explicação e a forma de entender como falamos ainda são bem pertinentes. Gostei bastante da postura dele de tratar a língua como algo vivo e biológico, que não se deteriora, e sim muda de acordo com os costumes e a forma que as pessoas falam.