Declare Books Supposing The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
| Original Title: | The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language |
| ISBN: | 0060958332 (ISBN13: 9780060958336) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | William James Book Award (1994) |
Steven Pinker
Paperback | Pages: 448 pages Rating: 4.03 | 17638 Users | 894 Reviews
Be Specific About Regarding Books The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
| Title | : | The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language |
| Author | : | Steven Pinker |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 448 pages |
| Published | : | November 7th 2000 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics (first published January 1st 1994) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Science. Humanities. Linguistics. Psychology. Language. Philosophy. Biology. Neuroscience |
Relation In Favor Of Books The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
The classic book on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind.In this classic, 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.
Rating Regarding Books The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
Ratings: 4.03 From 17638 Users | 894 ReviewsCriticism Regarding Books 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 anFirst 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
Pinker is as much of a twit as his hair suggests: The Language Instinct is a miserable pile of unsupported and unsupportable conclusions, straw man attacks, hypocrisy leap-frogging into doublethink, shoddy reasoning, knee-jerk contrarianism, indeliberate obtusity, and gut-feeling argumentation. Pinker tries to synthesize the ideas of people smarter than he is (Chomsky, mostly), and many of these are perfectly fine the way they were originally formulated; they no longer are after Pinker is
This book is an excellent introduction into linguistics and language-related scientific fields (such as psycholinguistics, evolutionary linguistics, learning theory, etc), for someone like me who has been fascinated by the subject for a long time, but only had the chance to dabble a toe or two into one sub-area or another.It corrects many popular misconceptions about language and language learning, from the point of view of the author, based on the latest scientific concensus (at the time the
Main takeaways:- Language is an innate skill possessed by humans and not acquired artificially through teaching like writing, programming, etc.- Although innate, the skill can be automatically learnt only during the critical period of up to 6 years of age. Beyond this age, it has to be artificially acquired like a second language.- Just one generation of children brought up by adults who speak a "pidgin" (a language lacking grammar and consisting of mere words from a number of different
Given the current divide in linguistics between the Functional/Cognitive theoretical approach to language and the formalist, generative approach which Pinker supports and has largely popularized with this book, The Language Instinct is an intellectually irresponsible endeavor. He frames linguistic nativism as a non-negotiable fact when actually, there is a fierce debate within linguistics which is moving away from ideas of those like Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky. The opposing school of thought
There's a joke in this book that linguists really like. An English woman has just got off the plane at Boston's Logan airport. She takes a cab, and starts questioning the driver about where to obtain various local delicacies."Oh yes," she says in her posh English accent. "Could you tell me where you can get scrod here?"And the driver replies, "You know, you don't often hear that in the pluperfect subjunctive!"__________________________________________Another linguist joke, for people who haven't
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