The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

  Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the World (2005). A history of the world through the history of its languages.

  Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (2007). Last-minute addition: another excellent book on the science of reading.

  Have You Read?

  More by Steven Pinker

  WORDS AND RULES:

  THE INGREDIENTS OF LANGUAGE

  How does language work, and how do we learn to speak? Why do languages change over time, and why do they have so many quirks and irregularities? In this original and totally entertaining book, written in the same engaging style that illuminated his bestselling classics, The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker explores the profound mysteries of language.

  By picking a deceptively simple phenomenon—regular and irregular verbs—Pinker connects an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and the humanities: the history of languages; the theories of Noam Chomsky and his critics; the attempts to create language using computer simulations of neural networks; what there is to learn from children’s grammatical “mistakes”; the latest techniques in identifying genes and imaging the brain; and major ideas in the history of Western philosophy. He makes sense of all this with the help of a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules. His theory extends beyond language and offers insight in the very nature of the human mind.

  “A gem.”

  —Mark Aronoff, New York Times Book Review

  “Crisp prose and neat analogies,…required reading for anyone interested in cognition and language.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Notes to P.S. Material

  Darwin yesterday and today: Ridley 2004.

  Chomsky yesterday and today: Barsky 1997; Chomsky & Peck 1987; Collier & Horowitz 2004; McGilvray 2005.

  Chomsky et al. vs. Pinker and Jackendoff: Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch 2002; Jackendoff & Pinker 2005; Pinker & Jackendoff 2005; Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky 2005.

  Foundations of Language: Jackendoff 2002.

  Pirahã: Everett 2005. Pirahã spirits: http://web.archive.org/web/20001121191700/amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/people.html. Skepticism on Pirahã claims: Commentaries in Everett 2005, Liberman 2006, and Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues 2007.

  Ebonics: McWhorter 1999; Pullum 1999.

  Nicaraguan Sign Language: Senghas & Coppola 2001; Senghas, Kita, & Özy¨rek 2004.

  Do parents matter? Harris 1998, 2006; Pinker 2002, chapter 19.

  Poverty of the input: Ritter 2002; Pullum & Scholz 2002.

  Williams syndrome: Eckert et al. 2006.

  FOXP2 gene: Enard et al. 2002; Shu et al. 2005; Marcus & Fisher 2003.

  K family: Vargha-Khadem et al. 1998; Bishop 2002.

  Grammatical Specific Language Impairment: van der Lely 2005.

  Heritability of language: Stromswold 2001.

  Neo-Whorfianism: Gentner & Goldin-Meadow 2003.

  Minimalism: Chomsky 1995. Problems with minimalism: Johnson & Lappin 1997; Pinker & Jackendoff 2005; Jackendoff & Pinker 2005. Simpler syntax: Bresnan 1982, Culicover, & Jackendoff 2005.

  How children learn the meanings of words: Bloom 1999. Why word learning might be special: Pinker & Jackendoff 2005.

  Reading wars: McGuinness 1997; Anderson 2000.

  Pirahã again: Everett 2005, which includes several commentaries; Liberman 2006; Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues 2007.

  Pirahã recursion: Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues 2007; See also Everett 2007.

  Universal Grammar, pro and con: Grain & Thornton 1998; Levinson 2003; Baker 2001; Tomasello 2003. For an archive of language universals, see http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/proj/sprachbau.htm.

  Biostatistics and language diversity: Dunn et al. 2005; McMahon & McMahon 2003; McMahon & McMahon 2005; Pennisi 2004a.

  Indo-Europeans: Balter 2004.

  Genes and languages: Cavalli-Sforza 2000. Skeptical linguists: Pennisi 2004a; McMahon & McMahon 2005; Sims-Williams 1998.

  Clicks in Proto-World: Wade 2004; Pennisi 2004b.

  Endangered languages: Wuethrich 2000.

  How babies talk: Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek 2000.

  Early advantage in language learning: Birdsong 1999; Neville & Bavelier 2000; Petitto & Dunbar in press; Senghas & Coppola 2001. Accent: Flege 1999.

  Bilingual brains: Kim 1997; Petitto & Dunbar in press; Neville & Bavelier 2000.

  Critical period or steady decline: Birdsong 2005.

  Adults can’t learn a first language: Mayberry 1993.

  Bilingual education, American-style: Garvin 1998; Rossell 2003; Rossell & Baker 1996.

  Your brain on language: Dronkers, Pinker, & Damasio 1999; Gazzaniga 2004; Poeppel & Hickok 2004.

  Brain on fire: Sahin, Pinker, & Halgren 2006.

  Making sense of the brain on language: Hagoort 2005; Hickok & Poeppel 2004.

  Wiring the brain: Marcus 2002.

  Language evolution: Christiansen & Kirby 2003; Kenneally 2007. Language and the cognitive niche: Pinker 2003; The search for the origins of language: Kenneally 2007.

  Genes and language: The SLI Consortium 2002; Dale et al. 1998; Stromswold 2001; Marcus & Fisher 2003.

  Natural selection of human genes: Clark et al. 2003; Enard et al. 2002; Sabeti et al. 2006.

  Modeling language evolution: Nowak & Komarova 2001.

  Kanzi: Savage-Rumbaugh et al. 1993. Evaluating animal language claims: Anderson 2004.

  Parrot: Pepperberg 1999. Starlings: Centner et al. 2006, though see also http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003076.htmland http://linguistiist.org/issues/17/17-1528.html. Dolphins: see Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch 2002. Dogs: Hare et al. 2002.

  Chomsky et al. vs. Pinker and Jackendoff: Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch 2002; Jackendoff & Pinker 2005; Pinker & Jackendoff 2005; Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky 2005.

  References to P.S. Material

  Anderson, K. 2000. The reading wars: Understanding the debate over how best to teach children to read. Los Angeles Times http://www.nrrf.org/artide_anderson6-18–00.htm.

  Anderson, S. R. 2004. Dr. Dolittle’s delusion: Animal communication, linguistics, and the uniqueness of human language. New Haven: Yale University Press.

  Baker, M. 2001. The atoms of language. New York: Basic Books.

  Balter, M. 2004. Search for the Indo-Europeans. Science 303 (5662): 1323.

  Barsky, R. F. 1997. Noam Chomsky: A life of dissent. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  Birdsong, D. 2005. Understanding age effects in second language acquisition. In Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives, ed. by J. Kroll and A. de Groot. New York: Oxford University Press.

  Birdsong, D., ed. 1999. Second language acquisition and the critical period hypothesis. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.

  Bishop, D. V. M. 2002. Putting language genes in perspective. Trends in Genetics 18 (2): 57–59.

  Bloom, P. 1999. How children learn the meanings of words. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  Bresnan, J. 1982. The mental representation of grammatical relations. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. 2000. Genes, peoples, and languages. New York: North Point Press.

  Chomsky, N. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  Chomsky, N., & Peck, J. 1987. The Chomsky reader. New York: Pantheon Books.

  Christiansen, M., & Kirby, S., eds. 2003. Language evolution: States of the art. New York: Oxford University Press.

  Clark, A. G., Glanowski, S., Nielsen, R., Thomas, P. D., Kejariwal, A., Todd, M. A., Tanenbaum, D. M., Civello, D., Lu, F., Murphy, B., Ferriera, S., Wang, G., Zheng, X., White, T. J., Sninsky, J. J., Adams, M. D., & Cargill, M. 2003. Inferring nonneutral evolution from human-chimp-mouse orthologous gene trios. Science 302 (5652): 1960–63.

  Collier, P., & Horowitz, D. 2004. The anti-Chomsky reader. San Francisco: Encounter Books.

  Culicover, P. W., & Jackendoff, R. 2005. Simpler Syntax. New York: Oxford University
Press.

  Grain, S., & Thornton, R. 1998. Investigations in universal grammar: A guide to experiments on the acquisition of syntax and semantics, language, speech, and communication. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  Dale, P. S., Simonoff, E., Bishop, D. V. M., Eley, T., Oliver, B., Price, T., Purcell, S., Stevenson, J., & Plomin, R. 1998. Genetic influence on language delay in two-year-old children. Nature Neuroscience 1:324–328.

  Dronkers, N., Pinker, S., & Damasio, A. R. 1999. Language and the aphasias. In Principles of neural science, ed. by E. R. Kandel, J. H. Schwartz, & T. M. Jessell. Norwalk, Conn.: Appleton & Lange.

  Dunn, M., Terrill, A., Reesink, G., Foley, R. A., & Levinson, S. C. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309 (5743): 2072–75.

  Eckert, M. A., Galaburda, A. M., Bellugi, U., Korenberg, J. R., & Reiss, A. L. 2006. The neurobiology of Williams syndrome: Cascading influences of visual system impairment? Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 63 (16): 1867–75.

  Enard, W, Przeworski, M., Fisher, S. E., Lai, C. S. L., Wiebe, V., Kitano, T., Monaco, A. P., & Pääbo, S. 2002. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Nature 418: 869–872.

  Everett, D. 2005. Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: Another look at the design features of human language. Current Anthropology 46: 621–646.

  ———. 2007. Cultural constraints on grammar in Pirahã: A reply to Nevins, Pesetsky & Rodrigues. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000427

  Fitch, W. T., Hauser, M. D., & Chomsky, N. 2005. The evolution of the language faculty: Clarifications and implications. Cognition 97 (2): 179–210.

  Flege, J. E. 1999. Age of learning and second-language speech. In Second language acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis, ed. by D. Birdsong. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.

  Garvin, G. 1998. Loco, completamente loco: The many failures of “bilingual education.” Reason, January.

  Gazzaniga, M. S. 2004. The cognitive neurosciences. 3rd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  Gentner, D., & Goldin-Meadow, S., eds. 2003. Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  Centner, T. Q., Fenn, K. M., Margoliash, D., & Nusbaum, H. C. 2006. Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds. Nature 440: 1204–7.

  Golinkoff, R., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. 2000. How babies talk: The magic and mystery of language in the first three years of life. New York: Penguin.

  Hagoort, P. 2005. On Broca, brain, and binding: A new framework. Trends in Cognitive Science 9 (9): 416–423.

  Hare, B., Brown, M., Williamson, C., & Tomasello, M. 2002. The domestication of social cognition in dogs. Science 298 (5598): 1634–36.

  Harris, J. R. 1998. The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. New York: Free Press.

  ———. 2006. No two alike: Human nature and human individuality. New York: Norton.

  Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N., & Fitch, W. T. 2002. The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298:1569–79.

  Hickok, G., & Poeppel, D. 2004. Dorsal and ventral streams: A framework for understanding aspects of the functional anatomy of language. Cognition 92:67–99.

  Jackendoff, R. 2002. Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

  Jackendoff, R., & Pinker, S. 2005. The nature of the language faculty and its implications for the evolution of language (Reply to Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky). Cognition 97 (2): 211–25.

  Johnson, D., & Lappin, S. 1997. A critique of the Minimalist Program. Linguistics and Philosophy 20:273–333.

  Kenneally, C. 2007. The first word: The search for the origins of language. New York: Viking.

  Kim, K. H. S. 1997. Distinct cortical areas associated with native and second languages. Nature 388:171–174.

  Levinson, S. C. 2003. Space in language and cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  Liberman, M. 2006. Parataxis in Pirahã. Language Log http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003162.html.

  Marcus, G. F. 2002. The birth of the mind. New York: Basic Books.

  Marcus, G. F., & Fisher, S. E. 2003. FOXP2 in focus: What can genes tell us about speech and language? Trends in Cognitive Science 7 (6): 257–262.

  Mayberry, R. 1993. First-language acquisition after childhood differs from second-language acquisition: The case of American Sign Language. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36:1258–70.

  McGilvray, J. A. 2005. The Cambridge companion to Chomsky. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  McGuinness, D. 1997. Why our children can’t read. New York: Free Press.

  McMahon, A. M. S., & McMahon, R. 2003. Finding families: Quantitative methods in language classification. Transactions of the Philological Society 101 (1): 7–55.

  McMahon, A. M. S., & McMahon, R. 2005. Language classification by numbers, Oxford linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.

  McWhorter, J. 1999. Word on the street: Debunking the myth of “pure” standard English. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

  Neville, H. J., & Bavelier, D. 2000. Specificity and plasticity in neurocognitive development in humans. In The new cognitive neurosciences, ed. by M. S. Gazzaniga. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

  Nevins, A., Pesetsky, D., & Rodrigues, C. 2007. Pirahã exceptionality: A reassessment. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000411

  Nowak, M. A., & Komarova, N. L. 2001. Towards an evolutionary theory of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5 (7): 288–295.

  Pennisi, E. 2004a. The first language? Science 303 (5662): 1319–20.

  ———. 2004b. Speaking in tongues. Science 303 (5662): 1321–23.

  Pepperberg, I. M. 1999. The Alex studies: Cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

  Petitto, L., & Dunbar, K. In press. New findings from educational neuroscience on bilingual brains, scientific brains, and the educated mind. In Building usable knowledge in mind, brain, and education, ed. by K. Fisher, & T. Katzir. New York: Cambridge University Press.

  Pinker, S. 2002. The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Penguin.

  Pinker, S. 2003. Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche. In Language evolution: States of the art, ed. by M. Christiansen & S. Kirby. New York: Oxford University Press.

  Pinker, S., & Jackendoff, R. 2005. The faculty of language: What’s special about it? Cognition 95:201–236.

  Poeppel, D., & Hickok, G. 2004. Towards a new functional anatomy of language (Introduction to special issue). Cognition 92:1–12.

  Pullum, G. P. K. 1999. African American Vernacular English is not standard English with mistakes. In The workings of language: From prescriptions to perspectives, ed. by R. S. Wheeler. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

  Pullum, G. P. K., & Scholz, B. C. 2002. Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments. The Linguistic Review 19:9–50.

  Ridley, M. 2004. Evolution. 3rd ed. Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell.

  Ritter, N. 2002. A review of “The Poverty of the Stimulus Argument” (special issue). Linguistic Review 19 (1–2).

  Rossell, C. H. 2003. The near-end of bilingual education. Education Next (Fall): 44–52.

  Rossell, C. H., & Baker, K. 1996. The effectiveness of bilingual education. Research on the Teaching of English 30:7–74.

  Sabeti, P. C., Schaffner, S. F., Fry, B., Lohmueller, J., Varilly, P., Shamovsky, O., Palma, A., Mikkelsen, T. S., Altshuler, D., & Lander, E. S. 2006. Positive natural selection in the human lineage. Science 312 (5780): 1614–20.

  Sahin, N., Pinker, S., & Halgren, E. 2006. Abstract grammatical processing of nouns and verbs in Broca’s area: Evidence from fMRI. Cortex 42:540–562.

  Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S., Murphy, J., Sevcik, R. A., Brakke, K. E., Williams, S. L., & Rumbaugh, D. M. 1993. Language comprehension in ape and child. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 233:1–258.

  Senghas, A.
, & Coppola, M. 2001. Children creating language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language acquired a spatial grammar. Psychological Science 12:323–328.

  Senghas, A., Kita, S., & Özyürek, A. 2004. Children creating core properties of language: Evidence from an emerging sign language in Nicaragua. Science 305 (17): 1779–82.

  Shu, W., Cho, J. Y., Jiang, Y., Zhang, M., Weisz, D., Elder, G. A., Schmeidler, J., De Gasperi, R., Gama Sosa, M. A., Rabidou, D., Santucci, A. C., Perl, D., Morrisey, E., & Buxbaum, J. D. 2005. Altered ultrasonic vocalization in mice with a disruption in the FOXP2 gene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (27): 9643–48.

  Sims-Williams, P. 1998. Genetics, linguistics, and prehistory: Thinking big and thinking straight. Antiquity 72:505–527.

  The SLI Consortium. 2002. A genomewide scan identifies two novel loci involved in Specific Language Impairment. American Journal of Human Genetics 70:384–398.

  Stromswold, K. 2001. The heritability of language: A review and meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies. Language 77:647–723.

  Tomasello, M. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

  van der Lely, H. K. J. 2005. Domain-specific cognitive systems: Insight from Grammatical Specific Language Impairment. Trends in Cognitive Science 9 (2): 53–59.

  Vargha-Khadem, F., Watkins, K. E., Price, C. J., Ashburner, J., Alcock, K. J., Connelly, A., Frackowiak, R. S. J., Friston, K. J., Pembrey, M. E., Mishkin, M., Gadian, D. G., & Passingham, R. E. 1998. Neural basis of an inherited speech and language disorder. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95:12695–700.

  Wade, N. 2004. In click languages, an echo of tongues of the ancients. In The Best American Science and Nature Writing, ed. by S. Pinker. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.