The Language Instinct
by Steven Pinker
New York: Wm. Morrow, 1994.
Notes by Larry Czer
Ch.
1—An Instinct to
Acquire Art
Pinker outlines his argument: “Language
is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a
complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without
conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its
underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual and is distinct
from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.”
He claims cognitive scientists describe it as psychological faculty, mental
organ, neural system, and a computational mode—he prefers “instinct.”
Pinker’s main two arguments are the infinite variety of sentence combinations
and utterings and the lack of formalized instruction in very young children. He
supports Chomsky’s view that language is an evolutionary adaptation.
Pinker claims that children’s use of language in a variety of ways leads him to his conclusions. He cites the practices of plantation Babel, motherese, creolization as means for cildren to invent language when needed. He also decries the imitationist view.
Best quote, citing Max Weinreich: “Language
is a dialect with an army and a navy.”
Pinker dissects the issue of linguistic
determinism and criticizes the work of Whorf and his language studies. He
suggests that one cannot use language to think because its ambiguous, it lacks
logical explicitness, co-referencing issues muddle it, and the use of deictic
terms. “Indeed if babies did not have mentalese to translate to and from
English, it is not clear how learning English could take place, or even what
learning English would mean.”
Pinker discusses how language is a “discrete
combinatory system” which incorporates a blending system using a mental
dictionary and mental grammar. To support his claim he cites “the sheer
vastness of the language,” the infinite number of sentences we are able to
produce, and the infinite use of finite media. After a brief discussion of
ungrammaticality, he trashes the Markov model or the word chain device for
language acquisition. A word chain device is a bunch of lists or prefabricated
phrases and a set of directions for going from list to list. Pinker uses the
phrase structure rules and diagrams to support his claim. He demonstrates how
limiting the traditional grammatical categories are; he even describes verbs as
“little despots.” “Grammar offers a clear refutation of the empiricist
doctrine that there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses.”
He concludes: “Grammar is a protocol that has to interconnect the ear, mouth,
and the mind, three very different kinds of machines. It cannot be tailored to
any of them but must have an abstract logic of its own.”
Memorable quote: “Chomsky’s writings
are classics…something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to
read.”
Pinker advances his argument by
demonstrating the complexity of morphology and the necessary storage of the
lexicon as a means for supporting his mental dictionary concept. He points to
English’s complexity in inflectional endings, compounding, its affixing
capability, and its capacity to invent new words. Pinker defines a word as “a
linguistic object that, if built out of parts by the rules of morphology,
behaves as the indivisible, smallest unit with respect to the rules of syntax—a
syntactic atom.” He concludes: “somehow a baby must intuit the correct
meaning of a word and avoid the mind-boggling number of logically impeccable
alternatives.”
Interesting stat: Shakespeare 15,000 words; average high school graduate 60,000 words?
Memorable Quote: “Longest word: floccinaucinihilipilification:
the categorizing of something as trivial or worthless.”
Pinker expounds on the complexity of the
acoustic nature of oral language. He claims speech perception is another one of
the biological miracles making up the language instinct. A top-down theory
confirms the relativist philosophy that we hear what we expect to hear, that our
knowledge determines out perception, and ultimately that we are not in direct
contact with any objective reality.” He ends with what he calls a halfhearted
defense of English spelling.
Interesting example of language
redundancy: yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls
wxth xn “x.”
Pinker advances his argument for human language by demonstrating the shortcomings of “machine” attempts at language production. He claims computers can provide one aspect of language requirement—memory, but fails miserably wit decision-making. He cites sentence embedding as a prime example of shortcomings; he likes embedded sentences to onions or Russian dolls.
Quote: “Language must be structured so
that the listener can place each fact into an existing framework.”
Here Pinker
discusses various theories of linguistic diversity and why languages are so
unintelligible to each other, yet have vastly similar structures. A search for a
proto-language, which he finds suspect, and an overview of historical
linguistics are part of the discussion. A universal language instinct might
reflect universals of thought or of mental information processing that are not
specific to language.” He points again to language’s abstractness and
transcendent of time and space. He cites heredity, sources of language
variation, and separation among groups of speakers as critical to language
evolution. Like Deacon, he maintains that languages are perpetuated by children
and that if a language is spoken only by adults, it will eventually die out.
Ch.
9—Baby
Born Talking—Describes Heaven
Pinker claims that all infants come into the world with linguistic skills, and he outlines and reviews how fast and vast language learning by young children is. He overviews word acquisition, sentence production, and rule usage by young children. He calls the three-year old a “grammatical genius.” “Language develops about as quickly as the growing brain can handle it.”
Teacher
reminder of the day: “Often the
errors follow the logic of grammar so beautifully that the puzzle is not why the
children make the errors, but why they sound like errors to adult ears at all.”
Ch. 10—Language Organ and Grammar Genes
Pinker
overviews brain regions and brain mapping to find the language center. He uses
the impairment studies and dismisses Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas as the
grammar center, though they are critical in language use. He maintains a neural
networking system. He discusses the DNA search, but the real treat is that we
are treated to a couple of examples of the linguistic “genius” of Dan
Quayle.
Here Pinker
admits that Chomsky’s theory of language instinct seems to be incompatible
with the Darwinian theory of evolution. Pinker posits natural selection as the
primary means. Warning: This chapter includes numerous animal studies and reads
a lot like Deacon.
Pinker plays
the role of answering the differences between rule, grammatical, and
ungrammatical. He debunks nine myths of what he calls the “language mavens”
of our society. He calls for a more thoughtful discussion on how language is
used. He suggests the aspect of language most worth changing is the clarity and
style of written prose. (He likes Strunk and White and Williams’ Style.)
Pinker debunks the Standard Social Science Model and biological determinism, and blank slates. He proposes his brain modules theory.
Interesting historical fact quote: “History is written by generals, not mothers.”
Launched
July 20, 2001
Project for IUP Psycholinguistics