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Cloud 9 Books Condition: The Folio Society, New hardcover book and slipcase sealed in original publisher's shrinkwrap. Book Club--unstated Large book, black boards, gilt lettering bright on spine, pages. DJ creased at back right.
The Wild Muse Published: The thesis is solid Customers who bought this item also bought. It is part of a whole new vision of the human mind: It is used for thinking and it is from mentalese that the thoughts get translated into the words and phrases of natural languages. Retrieved from " http: I really want to read this one now, thanks to your splendid review, Magda!
Callaghan Books South Published: Bound in publisher's original green quarter-cloth with Modigliani paper boards printed with design by Andy Martin and housed in an olive paper-covered slipcase. Hard cover in dust jacket.
William Morrow, , first printing. Near fine in near fine dust jacket.
The Wild Muse Published: Russell Books Ltd Published: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Quarter green cloth with illustrated paper boards, in a green card slipcase. An Unused, unmarked and unblemished copy. Why do immigrants struggle with a new language, only to have their fluent children ridicule their grammatical errors?
Why can't computers converse with us? Why is the hockey team in Toronto called the Maple Leafs, not the Maple Some are from popular science: Have scientists really reconstructed the first language spoken on earth?
Buy The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language: The New Science of Language and Mind (Penguin Science) New Ed by Steven Pinker (ISBN. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Penguin Science) eBook: Steven Pinker: www.farmersmarketmusic.com: Kindle Store.
Are there genes for grammar? Can chimpanzees learn sign language?
However, the book is written in the way that actually allows for skipping the strictly technical stuff. Of course, the understanding gained in this way will be somehow shallower, but it is still possible to learn something even if all the graphs are skipped. And there are real gems of information and explanation here. The effortless way with which children acquire language must have surely amazed any parent who ever stopped to think how complicated speaking actually is.
Pinker shows how natural and good children are at talking often by comparing them with adults learning foreign languages consciously in comparison to their rather poor performance on many other mental and physical tasks, and demonstrates the logic of the whole process including the errors that are made during learning. The book also shows why it makes sense to have a critical period for language learning it seems virtually impossible to acquire language after early adolescence if none was learned before and why input from other live human beings is needed for language acquisition.
The two closing chapters of the book are amongst my favourites.
In fact, if you pick this volume up and are not sure if it's worth reading, go straight to the chapter titled 'Language Mavens'. It focuses on the difference between the rules of natural language as it is actually spoken, which are strictly adhered to by all people that use the particular dialect and the prescriptive rules that carefully delineate the way that the speech is supposed to be.
Pinker is rather ruthlessly dismissive of the prescribers and he treats most of their rules as shibboleths, designed to differentiate between the elite and the 'uneducated masses'. On the other hand he has a very sensible attitude to the practical proposition that people should learn the 'standard dialect' as socially useful and especially to improving the standards of the written prose. After all, written language is not an instinct. We are biologically designed to speak, but not write or read. Writing is a craft; a difficult one and one that 'needs practice, instruction, feedback and examples'.
The final words in the book go well beyond language and towards a theory of mind in general. The study of language is a perfect launching pad for an assault on the Standard Social Science Model which is a belief that human beings are born into this world as universal learning machines, infinitely malleable by culture and the environment. Pinker is one of the most passionate exponents of the opposing paradigm: The universal human nature which we all share, the fact that we came here equipped with sophisticated mental systems of which language is only one, albeit very significant one; the meta-culture that makes communication possible between an Eskimo, New Guinea highlander and an Oxford don; the hundreds of human universals from gossip and jokes to use of tools, from sex in private to fear of snakes, from laws against murder and rape to feasting and fondness for sweets: You can read more book reviews or buy The Language Instinct: Just send us an email and we'll put the best up on the site.
I wish I had read this review when I was wondering what else readers might like when reviewing Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett - this sounds just the ticket, as although that book was classified as travel, much of the content is challenging notions of language acquisition.