The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates LanguageHarper Collins, 2010 M12 14 - 576 pages "A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind In The Language Instinct, 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. |
From inside the book
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... . . . Pinker debunks with panache , cuts through the confusion of jargon , and tells a mean anecdote . He does for language what David Attenborough does for animals , explaining difficult scientific concepts so easily that they are indeed.
... animals like " exaltation of larks . " For I will be writing not about the English lan- guage or any other language , but about something much more basic : the instinct to learn , speak , and understand language . For the first time in ...
... animals . They know that language pervades thought , with different languages causing their speakers to construe reality in different ways . They know that children learn to talk from role models and caregivers . They know that ...
... animal kingdom . Some kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar . Some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles by calibrating the posi- tions of the constellations against the time of day and year . In ...
... animals do , and many more besides ; our flexible intelligence comes from the interplay of many instincts competing ... animal feel about the particu- lar things it tends to do in presence of particular objects . .. To the lion it is the ...
Contents
1 | |
12 | |
44 | |
How Language Works | 74 |
Words Words Words | 119 |
The Sounds of Silence | 153 |
Talking Heads | 190 |
The Tower of Babel | 231 |
Language Organs and Grammar Genes | 302 |
The Big Bang | 340 |
The Language Mavens | 382 |
Mind Design | 419 |
Notes | 449 |
References | 469 |
Glossary | 503 |
Index | 517 |