The Language Instinct

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		The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
In *The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s leading scientists of language and the mind, explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, how it evolved. Noam Chomsky* said, "An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written as well." "Run, don’t walk, to your bookstore and buy *The Language Instinct. In a dazzling, informative, and funny book, Steven Pinker* brings you into the wonderful world of language. He spares the reader the mumbo jumbo of linguistics and directs your attention to an unalterable truth. Language is an instinct, and in that discovery, Pinker reveals the secrets of the mind. It is brilliant." Michael S. Gazzaniga, Director, Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis (author of Nature’s Mind) The following is an excerpt from chapter two, Chatterboxes, The ubiquity of complex language among human beings is a gripping discovery and, for many observers, compelling proof that language is innate. But . . . the universality of language does not lead to an innate language instinct as night follows day. To convince you that there is a language instinct, I will have to fill in an argument that leads from the jabbering of modern peoples to the putative genes for grammar. The crucial intervening steps come from my own professional specialty, the study of language development in children. The crux of the argument is the complex language is universal because children actually reinvent it, generation after generation—not because they are taught, not because they are generally smart, not because it is useful to them, but because they just can’t help it. Let me now take you down this trail of evidence.

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