I’ve really tried hard to read this book, mostly because I’ve been more interested in reading its counterpoints afterwards. But there’s so much nonsensical reasoning in there that I can’t. I just can’t anymore! Actually, I feel very generous giving it 2 stars!… Maybe I should get ChatGPT to boil every chapter down to 3 key points and only read them…

Ο Steven Pinker σε αυτή την επιτομή της σύγχρονης γλωσσολογίας παραθέτει αναλυτικά όλα τα αποδεικτικά στοιχεία σχετικά με την έμφυτη φύση της γλώσσας. Ανατρέπει πολλά κατεστημένα «κλισέ», φωτίζει σκοτεινές πτυχές του αντικειμένου της επιστήμης της γλωσσολογίας και τοποθετεί τη γλώσσα στο γενικότερο πλαίσιο των γνωστικών επιστημών: στη μελέτη του ανθρώπινου εγκεφάλου.

Στο βιβλίο θα βρείτε γιατί υπάρχει μια ενιαία γλώσσα, τα νοησιακά, στα οποία σκέφτεται κάθε άνθρωπος. Πάνω εκεί χτίζεται η φυσική του γλώσσα και ακολουθεί ο γραπτός λόγος. Έτσι, λοιπόν, κανείς δεν μπορεί να ισχυριστεί την ανωτερότητα οποιασδήποτε γλώσσας. Επίσης, θα εκπλαγείτε όταν μάθετε ότι ο μέσος Αμερικανός (του κολεγίου) γνωρίζει 60.000 λέξεις, ενώ ο Shakespeare, από τους συγγραφείς με το πλουσιότερο λεξιλόγιο, χρησιμοποιεί μόνο 15.000!

Το βιβλίο είναι γλαφυρό, αν και πιστεύω πως στο πρωτότυπο θα ήταν ακόμη καλύτερο -η μετάφραση μάλλον το αδικεί. Αν τελικά δεν πειστείτε ότι η γλώσσα είναι έμφυτη, τότε μάλλον δεν διαβάσατε προσεκτικά το βιβλίο.

De los libros de Pinker, este fue el que mas me costó seguirle el ritmo, especialmente en la partes en las que el autor quería mostrar un punto usando como ilustración, arboles sintácticos.
Pero en general es una lectura entretenida que ayuda a entender como nuestro lenguaje tiene fuertes raices instintivas. También este libro me ayudó a entender la tesis que dice que que todo el lenguaje humano muestra evidencia de una gramática universal, como lo planteo Chomsky. Este libro también hizo entender como funciona la evolución centrándose mayormente en el contexto del lenguaje.
Me dio mucha risa cuando Pinker se burló en varios capitulos de los expertos de las sintaxis que critican a quienes supuestamente hablan o escriben mal. Esta reflexión ayuda a tomar con mas calma eso de respetar el lenguaje dogmáticamente, porque este siempre ha ido transformándose sin reglas precisas.

Very interesting. Too long and technical for me. Most of the stuff I didn't care about. Not a criticism of the book but just a mismatch of interest.

Middle was boring. Writing was good. Sharp style. Insults fools and posers. Funny. Charming. The perfect example is the beginning of chapter 11 pg 340. This is the way to argue. Funny, ridiculing, forceful and gets the message across.

His metaphors are really good. Aspire to this.

Language is built into the mind. It evolved by natural selection. It is not a cultural artifact. "Ghetto talk" is just as complex as perfect english. Perfect english is a collection of rules that were sold to allow new wealth from the industrial revolution seem classy.

Quotes:

"Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each other's minds."

"Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is quantitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently."

"In many cases a pidgin can be transmuted into a full complex language in one fell swoop: all it takes is for a group of children to be exposed to the pidgin at the age when they acquire their mother tongue."

"People store genes in their gonads and pass them to their children through their genitals; they store grammars in their brains and pass them to their children through their mouths. Gonads and brains are attached to each other in bodies, so when bodies move, genes and grammars move together. That is the only reason that geneticists find any correlation between the two."

"The brute mathematical fact is that all things being equal, there is a better chance of being a young person than being an old person. So genes that strengthen young organisms at the expense of old organisms have the odds in their favor and will tend to accumulate over evolutionary timespans, whatever the bodily system, and the result is overall senescence."

"Neuroscientists estimate that about thirty thousand genes, the majority of the human genome, are used to build the brain and nervous system."

"Outwitting and second-guessing an organism of approximately equal mental abilities with non-overlapping interests, at best, and malevolent intentions, at worst, makes formidable and ever-escalating demands on cognition. And a cognitive arms race clearly could propel a linguistic one. Ina ll cultures, social interactions are mediated by persuasion and argument...evolving humans lived in a world in which language was woven into the intrigues of politics, economics, technology, family, sex, and friendship that played key roles in individual reproductive success."

"All behavior is an interaction between nature and nurture, whose contributions are as inseparable as the length and width of a rectangle in determining its area." Beautiful

The book is more than a quarter century old, which is a very long time in fast evolving fields like neuroscience, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology or linguistics. That's why I was a little hesitant to read it now, but the historical importance of this book, and my respect for Steven Pinker's thinking helped me overcome this hesitation. I am glad that I did.

First of all, a good portion of the book deals with the structure of language, which is almost timeless. Pinker has an uncanny ability to pick great examples to make a point. Anyone who is fascinated by language should enjoy these portions, even if they don't necessarily agree with all his assertions. His main thesis is hinged on Noam Chomsky's theory of us having an innate language skill. As a consequence of that, the author does not subscribe to the idea of cultural relativism, which is popular among many liberal scholars since it helps them dispel the notions of aristocratic or racial superiority. The author argues that one does not need to believe in a "blank slate" theory in order to dispel such baseless ideas.

I mostly agree with Pinker that our brain and our mind has to have a strong genetic component that is shaped by evolution. If fact I find it rather absurd to believe that evolution will not have a strong influence on the development of our mind, and there is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting this. There is no contradiction between accepting that there is a such a thing as human nature, and becoming a puppet in the hand of our genes. Such understanding can only come from incomplete and oversimplified understanding of how biology works.

In conclusion, anyone interested in language and science would benefit from reading this book, even though many things have changed since this book was written.

I really-really like my readings about languages (English and my native Russian), never bored with them, and this particular book was a treat. I’ll read other books of Steven Pinker for sure.

Bit late to the discussion. The only question left to ask is one I’m not really qualified to answer: how well has the book aged over a decade and a half of psycho- and comparative linguistics? I’m not a linguist, but I know enough basic biology to sort the wheat from the chaff in a popular science book. Omit the chapters titled Grammar Organs and Language Genes, The Big Bang, and Mind Design. The general reader has probably forgotten more high school biology than these chapters rightfully explain. Besides, talk of a “language or a grammar gene” written before the important work in comparative molecular evolution of FOXP2 (read: Evo-Devo, Deep Homology and FoxP2: implications for the evolution of speech and language) and genomics in general is simply uninformative. Aside from that Pinker fails in his endeavor to wed evolutionary biology to a theory of a Universal Grammar. Instead, he summarizes a few basic concepts throughout these chapters—comically disparaging Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin as mere paleontologist and a geneticist in the process—and assumes the reader will make the logical leap to a grammar gene. Another tired chapter on the state-of-the-science of voice recognition machines can be summed when Pinker asks "So why is it that a nation that can put a man on the moon cannot build a computer that can take dictation?" As Tecumseh Fitch has it "... discussion of the evolution of language often involve more speculation than data." Symptoms of an unhealthy science.

The Language Instinct draws two conclusions: language is unique to our lineage and there exists something called a universal grammar. It must be somewhat unusual that though Pinker’s ideas in this book are “deeply influenced” by Chomsky, Pinker is far better known to undergraduates, graduates and the general public (Richard Dawkins and WD Hamiilton are another example, I guess). The notion being Chomsky’s academic writing is unapproachable. That’s not to say readers won't encounter hurdles to understanding in this book. Pinker’s attempts at levity via popular culture quotes are as distracting as they are entertaining. His examples of grammar and syntax, which bulk up what should have been a slimmer text, are often so excessive and repetitive I’d lose the thread. One of these threads is that seemingly arbitrary regularities that occur in the English language (“John and I” over “Me and John”) are actually innate mechanisms instead of a transient cultural trend. Alternatively, he makes a convincing argument against a Pleistocene Ur-language.

The good news, however, is that the author of a book on linguistics writes clearly and succinctly. The bad news is that Pinker does arrogant too well. The natural inclination to posturing in a non-fiction book is that it invites a death by a thousand cuts approach to a critique. For such a thick book (now with four throwaway chapters!), we are rewarded with intuitive arguments driven more by anecdote than data. This predicates explanatory imprecision and conceptual wrong-headedness.

A chapter in the midst of all this, The Language Mavens, lively and satisfying, seems to foretaste Pinker’s 2014 book “Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.” As unreceptive as I am to Pinker’s posturing and condescension—all virtues for an anti-prescriptivist manifesto!—I now must read that book.

Esqueci de comentar. Bem, o livro começa super empolgante, fica extremamente focado em gramática no meio e termina bem! A leitura é até que fluída, mas infelizmente me parece viável apenas em inglês, justamente pelas questões de gramática.

O Pinker tem muita coisa problemática, principalmente em relação ao livro mais recente dele (Enlightenment Now), mas no mais traz conhecimentos gerais bastante importantes e algumas anedotas interessantes, por exemplo: Nova Guinea e os índios assustados: você é real?, as respostas dadas por crianças com a síndrome de Williams, o mito do tempo Hopi e até umas trivias sobre como escolher o título da sua tese acadêmica com o Social Science Jargon Generator.

Aprendi também sobre os preconceitos indesejáveis com certas línguas, dialetos ou mesmo gírias e que preciosismo não é bacana. Também fiquei mais curiosa para entender sobre o desenvolvimento da linguagem em crianças, aparentemente as genias da coisa toda.

Recomendo 9/10!

"So the basic premise of the language instinct – that such a thing could be transmitted genetically – seems doubtful."

in: https://aeon.co/essays/the-evidence-i...

I sit here and tap away, apparently randomly, on my keyboard; hopefully what appears on your screen is sufficiently accurate for me to transmit a solid form of my nebulous thoughts into your eyes and interpretation centres of your brain. With each book we read, each conversation we have similar events take place. It is a process that most of us take for granted but try, for a moment, to imagine a world in which language didn't exist. What would we have lost?
Steven Pinker is a genius, alongside Noam Chomsky and Stephen Hawking. His literary style is dense and required much concentration to penetrate but once I had resolved this conflict I was entranced and captivated by the world he showed me. Did a scientific explanation of language acquisition remove the wonder? No, it made it more intense and even more precious.

Wow, a fair number of angry 1-star reviews of this book here on Goodreads. I suspect these are anti-Chomskyites or bitter social scientists who didn't like Pinker's criticism of relativism in the final chapter. Or possibly, johnny-come-latelys who are carrying over their critique from his later book, The Blank Slate. As a pop-sci overview of modern linguistics (ie. the whole point of the book), this is excellent.

Some random thoughts on criticism: Within the field Pinker certainly has staked out his own position as a defender of many of Chomsky's ideas (Chomsky the brilliant linguist, not Chomsky the idiot leftist tool), but the only reason to whine about that and give 1-star is if you aspire to be the ideologue you claim Pinker is. After all, these ideas are fundamental to the field and this is a very well-written book. As it happens, I agree with Pinker's views but to prove I don't review along party lines like one of these jackass whiners, check out my review of The Mismeasure of Man where I take heat for defending Gould despite not swallowing his relativism wholesale. (Incidentally, Pinker criticizes Gould several times herein.) I think Pinker does an admirable job trying to transcend false dichotomies like nature vs. nurture, which is why it annoys me so to see such ignorant reviews criticizing him for doing the opposite.

A great textbook for anyone who wants to know about how language works, and how it is acquired. One of the most important books for any aspiring teachers, or even future parents.

If you deal with kids, you need to know stuff expounded in this book.