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The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics) (平装)
by Steven Pinker
| Category:
Nonfiction, Linguistics |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Putting language and its function into the context of human nature and human development, this is a wonderful book on linguistics. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 12 items |
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The Boston Globe Book Review (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
An excellent book full of wit and wisdom and sound judgment. |
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Kirkus Reviews (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Another in a series of books (Joel Davis's Mother Tongue, p. 1,303; Ray Jackendorf's Patterns in the Mind, p. 1439) popularizing Chomsky's once controversial theories explaining the biological basis of language. Variously mellow, intense, and bemused - but never boring - Pinker (Director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience/MIT), emphasizes Darwinian theory and defines language as a “biological adaptation to communicate.'' While Pinker bases his argument on the innate nature of language, he situates language in that transitional area between instinct and learned behavior, between nature and culture. Starting with what he calls a "grammar gene," Pinker describes the way primitives, children (his special interest), even the deaf evolve natural languages responding to the universal need to communicate. He refutes the "comic history'' of linguistic determinism, the belief that language shapes thinking, undermining it with examples from music, mathematics, and kinship theory. Following his lively, user-friendly demonstration of even the most forbidding aspects of linguistics, and his discussion of vocabulary, how words are acquired, built, and used, he rises to a celebration of the "harmony between the mind...and the texture of reality.'' This theme, the power and mystery of the human mind, permeates Pinker's engaging study, balanced with the more sober scientific belief that the mind is an “adapted computational model'': "To a scientist,'' he writes, "the fundamental fact of human language is its sheer improbability.'' Among the many interesting though not sequential ideas: If language is innate, biologically based, then it can't be taught either to animals or computers. Pinker shows why adults have difficulty learning a foreign language, and he mediates coolly between rules and usage, between systematic and non-prescriptive grammar. Designed for a popular audience, this is in fact a hefty read full of wonder and wisdom. |
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M. Oates (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
This book is nothing short of a masterpiece. Stephen Pinker's revolutionary work and the resultant writings stand at the precipice of a new era of understanding into the marvels of being human and what it is that makes us "us". This work, and his most recent (The Blank Slate) will one day be held out as the first tentative baby steps toward what will certainly be our greater unlocking of the secrets of the brain.
What really makes Pinker's work accessible is his breezy tone (and I mean that as a complement). Many great scientists are good researchers but very poor writers. Pinker, on the other hand, knows how to communicate his ideas in a facile and utile manner, allowing even those without a Ph.D. to quickly and effectively grasp his many cogent points and references. By choosing not to talk down to, or over the heads of his readers, Pinker assures that more and more people will be drawn into his world of grand paradigm-shattering concepts and will grow to marvel and appreciate all that makes us who we are. |
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Scott Maycrantz (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
This book covers modern linguistics for the general reader. Steven Pinker writes very well, so he's able to unload an enormous amount of facts without boring you in the details. He starts off with basic linguistic theories, describing how our minds construct language. We think in words and images, we derive sentences from a common (raw form of) grammar that's in everyone's brain, and we make constant adjustments in words and syntax to suit our purposes. The key idea is communication - it's built-in, it's always changing, it has a finite set of fundamental rules, and it has an infinite capacity for expression.
Then Pinker goes on to a variety of topics related to language. A few are very important and get a lengthy treatment. The location of the language organ in the brain, for example, is covered in detail. Other topics, such as artificial intelligence, are covered briefly. Pinker is interested in AI only as it relates to human language. AI doesn't tell us much, so he passes over it quickly.
The book goes on to cover teaching primates sign language, the evolutionary development of language, "the language mavens" (people who write newspaper columns about proper grammar), and language acquisition by children. This last topic is fascinating because so many of us have been there as we notice our kids are learning how to speak. Pinker offers a lot of interesting information about how and why a child learns to speak clearly and creatively.
I highly recommend this book. Steven Pinker knows his audience. He knows just how technical he can get, and how often he needs a personal anecdote or a joke to keep the layman awake and interested. He challenges you, cutting sentences to pieces and discussing dull topics like plurals, but he frames the grammar scientifically. Instead of getting bored by the mechanics of grammar, you feel like you're understanding the human mind. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
I am a speech-language pathologist who is still waiting for empirical proof that Chomsky is correct. I doubt that I will see it in my lifetime - or ever. You need to know that Pinker is a breathlessly passionate, obsessional convert to Chomsky and that he has many, many liberal axes to grind. He is a radical descriptivist and, like most in that school, derides and dismisses standard American English in favor of supposedly superior dialects. In the typical self-hating liberal Caucasian pattern, he starts out by claiming that all languages are equally complex and then goes on to knock his own heritage of Standard American English for its supposed deficiencies and inferiority. He does this while building a successful career as a writer whose mastery of SAE is his only appeal, in my view. What we have here is a man who dismisses SAE standards while writing books that are bestsellers because they are written in an excellent SAE style. Only in academia could we find such nonsense and such self-loathing among educated white men and women. How many books would Pinker sell if he wrote in BAE (black American English)? I doubt that he could express the complex ideas he adheres to in BAE, despite his protests that all languages are equally complex (and if Pinker really thinks that BAE is complex enough to express any thought, I challenge him to explain Chomsky's theories in it).
Pinker spends hundreds of pages trying to convince us that Chomsky is correct. He fails. This book is not a reasoned argument. It is the ravings of a man who throws out whatever examples he can find to support his religious-like adherence to Chomsky - only he doesn't tell you that he ignores all of the examples that argue against his viewpoint. Where is this supposed language device that, so far, only exists as a metaphysical fantasy in Pinker's mind?
Oh yeah, and I am sick of hearing how Chomsky is one of the most quoted intellectuals in the twentieth century. It is dishonest of Pinker to make that statement and not carefully add that Chomsky is usually quoted for his radical, virulently anti-American political writings that have absolutely nothing to do with his linguistic work. The fact is, few people actually read his linguistic work. They are nearly unreadable.
If you read this book, take with a grain of salt. Keep your eyes open for the many inconsistencies.
(A negative review. MSL remarks.)
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K. Johnson (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
There is a wealth of useful information in this book, and it's one of the rare ones that is an easy fun read because of Pinker's writing style, approach, and real-life examples. It's not esoteric at all. Many of the concepts in this book and it's examples can be passed on to students, who occasionally ask questions in particular about English and in general about second language acquisition. One doesn't have to have an interest in language to enjoy this book. The bibliography and references to past and present researchers from a variety of disciplines are presented, from Boas to Chomsky, to biological, physiological and psychological studies. Give it a whirl. |
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Erik Fleischer (MSL quote), Canada
<2006-12-29 00:00>
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 humor 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 favors 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 behavior tendencies of prematurated isolates indicates that a casual relationship exists between groundward tropism and lachrymatory behavior 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-caliber scientific text can be both clear and enjoyable, here's an outstanding addition for your personal library. |
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Peter Reeve (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Addressing as it does issues of cognition, language usage and acquisition, evolutionary biology and innate versus learned behavior, this work is relevant to many of the great intellectual debates of our time. It is very readable for the most part, although if some of the topics are new to you then you will find a few sections rather heavy going. More illustrations would have helped here. There are syntax structure diagrams and one very grudging, cursory sketch of the language centers of the brain, but many sections cry out for a diagram among all the verbiage.
Pinker's lively, humorous style is often commented on but I sometimes found it wearing. He will illustrate a point with an amusing newspaper cutting, then list a few more, then add "I could not resist some more..." and so on. I sometimes wished he would just get on with it.
A major problem with his nativist approach, which other reviewers have commented on, is that many examples he lists of usages that English speakers would never employ are nothing of the kind. Most of them are conceivable and since the first publication of this book, linguists have been busy recording them in the field. The thesis also becomes somewhat unraveled in the penultimate chapter, where he argues that 'you and I' and 'you and me' are equally correct in all circumstances, because 'the pronoun is free to have any case it wants'. But if this is so then what has become of the innate awareness of correct usage that the whole theory is about? If 'between you and I' sounds instinctively wrong to me and 'between you and me' sounds instinctively wrong to someone else, does that mean one of us has a mutant grammar gene? I doubt it.
The title itself is problematic. 'Instinct' is not a word much in favor among biologists nowadays and whatever language is, it is certainly not instinctive in the traditional sense. Early in the book, Pinker admits as much, but determines to use the word anyway, a use that owes more to marketing than to science.
Still, this is probably the best introductory linguistics text currently available. If you are new to linguistics, start here rather than with Chomsky, but please go on to read Geoffrey Sampson's work, perhaps starting with his website, to get an alternative view. As with most academic disputes, the answer no doubt lies somewhere in the middle. Since Chomsky's early work, the nativists have toned down their claims considerably, while their opponents have made concessions. On page 34 of this book, Pinker says, "No one has yet located a language organ or a grammar gene, but the search is on." More than a decade later, the search is still on. Good luck with that. |
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Chris Elvin (MSL quote), Japan
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The Language Instinct is probably the most enjoyable book that I have ever read about language. From start to finish, the author entertained while skillfully carving out a compelling case for why he believes that man has a unique gift for language learning. Whether you are a linguist, a sociologist, a neurologist, a language lover, or a fan of popular culture, there is something in this book for you. Pinker is erudite and eclectic, covering everything from Chomsky, grammar genes, children's language, Creoles, aphasics and the origin and evolution of language, to George Bush, Gary Larsen, Woody Allen, the Hill Street Blues, the Sapir-Whorf Great Eskimo Hoax, and Orwellian Newspeak. I liked this book not just because of the excellent way that Pinker presented his scientific argument, but also because of its richness about language and life in general. If there were one person that I could choose to invite to a cocktail party, it would be Steven Pinker. Do I believe everything he writes? Of course not! |
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Keith Nichols (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Professor Pinker has written an entertaining and easy-to-read book about how the human race comes to have language, apparently based on Noam Chomsky's not-so-entertaining or easy-to-read books, plus some of Prof. Pinker's own observations. He believes language comes out of people by instinct rather than totally as a learned skill. In this regard, he finds infants to be "geniuses" of language in that, for example, they can produce grammatically correct expressions they haven't heard before. To call them geniuses seems to me misusing the term somewhat. If a genius is someone who far exceeds the norm for his age group in some respect, then babies are not geniuses, since almost all seem to have the instinct for language. This minor quibble over terminology is not to dispute that human infants pick up language with great facility, however.
The discussion of how the brain works in the area of language is followed by a discussion of prescriptivist grammar, which Pinker criticizes for being a collection of outmoded and inappropriate rules that in many ways hamper more than help verbal expression. This is like shooting fish in a barrel, of course, since any collection of rules and regulations will eventually be rife with inconsistencies and unnecessary strictures. Taking potshots at grammar rules is like picking on the U.S. tax code or our collection of laws in general. As do many critics of grammar rules, Pinker occasionally employs ridiculous examples that a competent writer or editor would very likely avoid or eliminate entirely with a more efficient phrase or sentence.
When I encounter antiprescriptivists, I always wonder what they would substitute for grammar rules, if anything. They often refer to a "natural" grammar, which is apparently the instinctive process that Pinker finds. I wonder how far into the world of complex ideas this instinctive grammar can carry us and whether my version of it would jibe well enough with that of other folks to permit effective communication. Perhaps the antiprescriptivists will settle for updating existing texts with what they consider more suitable guidelines and pruning them of outmoded or senseless rules.
If you are interested in the origins of grammar and language, Pinker's book is a good place to start learning about them. It may relieve you of some of the grammar guilt you've carried since grade-school days. |
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