The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language in Science and Inquiry

Nov 02, 2017 Petra X rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 10-star-books, 2017-100-reviews, 2017-read, reviewed, misc-reference

In my bookshop are lots of books like, 'First 100 Words' and "ABC with pictures", you know those sort of books. We talk to our babies in 'motherese' and we point to things and name them, but we do not teach our babies grammar. We say things like 'look at those puppies there, they are much smaller than these ones here'. We don't explain when to use words like 'those' or 'these' or 'there' and 'here' and where we put them in a sentence.

We don't need to, Pinker says, Chomsky said, that grammar is In my bookshop are lots of books like, 'First 100 Words' and "ABC with pictures", you know those sort of books. We talk to our babies in 'motherese' and we point to things and name them, but we do not teach our babies grammar. We say things like 'look at those puppies there, they are much smaller than these ones here'. We don't explain when to use words like 'those' or 'these' or 'there' and 'here' and where we put them in a sentence.

We don't need to, Pinker says, Chomsky said, that grammar is built-in. That no matter what language a child learns, they will use the words grammatically without any instruction. And if a child learns wildly different languages as say Welsh, Spanish and English (there are many people who grow up speaking these particular three in Patagonia) they will use the correct grammar as well as words without any difficulty at all.
__________

Notes on reading: What I've learned so far: that it takes only one generation to turn a pidgin into a creole (language). Immigrant workers in Hawaii, Japanese, Filipinos, Chinese, Koreans even Portuguese and Europeans spoke to each other in pidgin. Pidgin is a collection of words without any grammar. It's a bit like what most of us who are not linguistically-gifted speak when we travel. We mix the few words we know of the local language with English and (if British) shouted loudly and repetitively until the 'native' gets it.

The children of the immigrant workers were looked after together when their parents were in the fields and they, just like that, because of the instinct for language, for grammar, turned the pidgin into a creole, a language that could express anything and everything. Children never speak pidgin, their brains impose structure on words and they learn from each other. Sadly, the window for language acquisition closes as puberty approaches. After that it is only talented individuals who can acquire a foreign language with perfect grammar and accent.

Jamaican, which Jamaicans continually put down as the patois of the poor people', not proper 'standard English' is in fact a proper language with its own grammar, although a majority of the words are derived from English and Akan,

Pinker says he's not 100% behind Chomsky's theories. He's pretty close though. I got bored with the chapters on Chomsky's language trees, I'm more interested in how we produce language than the structure of it.

Great book, a difficult and academic read (at least to me) and boring in bits too but none of that takes away from opening up a new skein of thought for me, and I enjoy that more than anything else from a book. ...more

179 likes · Like · see review

Dec 21, 2008 David Rubenstein rated it it was amazing

Shelves: linguistics, psychology, nonfiction, science

Previously, I had read Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought", which is also an excellent book. I enjoyed that book, so I next read this one--and I'm glad I did. "The Language Instinct" is an absolutely fascinating book! The author presents some very convincing arguments, that the acquisition of language is an instinct that has evolved over many generations, through natural selection. Steven Pinker is right on the money, when it comes to his analysis of evolution. Every chapter is compelling, an ...more

27 likes · Like · see review

Oct 24, 2010 Erica marked it as to-read

Shelves: did-not-finish-yet, language

I read about half of this book, but just didn't have the mental stamina to finish it right now. Language really interests me, but being interrupted every five minutes by a five year old makes it so hard to read lately. The writing was pretty dense; I'd like a little more pedestrian overview of this book. ...more

Like · see review