The Language Instinct

Description

From the Preface... I have never met a person who is not interested in language. I wrote this book to try to satisfy that curiosity. Language is beginning to submit to that uniquely satisfying kind of understanding that we call science, but the news has been kept a secret. For the language lover, I hope to show that there is a world of elegance and richness in quotidian speech that far outshines the local curiosities of etymologies, unusual words, and fine points of usage. For the reader of popular science, I hope to explain what is behind the recent discoveries (or, in many cases, nondiscoveries) reported in the press: universal deep structures, brainy babies, grammar genes, artifically intelligent computers, neural networks, signing chimps, talking Neanderthals, idiot savants, feral children, paradoxical brain damage, identical twins separated at birth, color pictures of the thinking brain, and the search for the mother of all languages. I also hope to answer many natural questions about languages, like why there are so many of them, why they are so hard for adults to learn, and why no one seems to know the plural of Walkman.

First Sentence

As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world.

Description

From the Publisher: 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.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (P.S.)Harper Perennial Modern Classics2007-09-04
• The language instinctW. Morrow and Co.1994-01-01
• The language instinctAllen Lane1994-01-01
• The language instinctHarperPerennial1995-01-01
• The Language Instinct (Penguin Science)Penguin Books Ltd1995-03-30
• The Language Instinct (Penguin Science)PaperbackPenguin Books Ltd1995-03-30