Doesn't teach you how to learn languages.
I thought this was going to be a book about HOW to learn a language. I'm giving this four stars, b/c it's not really the author's fault that I picked the wrong book for my purpose. It's written well and explained well, but I really don't need someone to spend a whole lot of pages explaining to me that we instinctively learn. BUT I understand that there are people who do want to read a whole lot of pages explaining this theory, so...four stars it is. In case you didn't get that, it's NOT a book that teaches you how to learn a language.
A Brief Review of The Language Instinct
Pinker's The Blank Slate is one of my all time favorite books. The Language Instinct is good enough for me to buy a copy after reading one from the Library, but it is a tougher read, especially the first third or so. The difficulty stems from it being more technical than The Blank Slate. A book that deals in large part with linguistics has to use some of the conventions of the discipline. In addition to establishing the basic premise, that language learning has a large genetic component, I liked Pinker's concept that words per se do not control our thoughts. Thinking and the expression of thinking are not the same thing. Another thing I found helpful is the degree of complexity and difficulty for computers to understand both the words used in speech and the comprehension of the indtended thoughts.
As usual, Pinker's writing style is marvelous, and frequently funny.
B.F. Skinner
His ideas are condemned like all valid science that exposes truth we will not accept. Hopefully time will give B.F. Skinner the credit he deserves. The most important scientist ever!!! Read his book. It is accurate.
Utterly fascinating
When I was a freshman in college I used my roommate's computer all the time. She frequently had this book open on her desk as part of her study of HumBio (Human Biology). At some point I picked it up to take a look...and I didn't put it down until I was finished. An outstanding, utterly readable and deeply compelling look at the structures of the brain, the mind they inform and the human culture they produce. Highly recommended for all humans.
The Language Instinct
This book exploded for me. As a student in the 1970s, I had been taught that language determined thought (no word, no concept, right?) and this book reverses that completely. When Pinker notes, in the chapter called "The Tower of Babel," that a Martian would observe that human beings speak a single language, albeit one composed of 6,000 dialects, it lands with a "crash." This has been a tough book to put down -- it demands to be read and savored. The middle portions about grammar make me regret having napped through my English classes in (ironically) Grammar School when we diagrammed sentences and learned about S(ubject)V(erb)Object. It's never too late!
