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
Results 1-5 of 20
... speakers to construe reality in different ways . They know that children learn to talk from role models and caregivers . They know that grammatical sophistication used to be nurtured in the schools , but sagging educa- tional standards ...
... speakers are perfunctory and highly idealized . Though I happen to agree with many of his arguments , I think that a conclusion about the mind is convincing only if many kinds of evi- dence converge on it . So the story in this book is ...
... speaker , are dozens of subroutines that arrange the words to express the meaning . Despite decades of effort , no artificially engi- neered language system comes close to duplicating the person in the street , HAL and C3PO ...
... speakers call canines dogs whereas French speakers call them chiens . It is even a bit misleading to call Standard English a “ language ” and these varia- tions " dialects , " as if there were some meaningful difference between them ...
... speakers invert subjects and auxiliaries in negative main clauses like Don't nobody know ; SAE speakers invert them only in questions like Doesn't anybody know ? and a few other sentence types . BEV allows its speakers the option of ...
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 |