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The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Perennial Classics) (平装)
by Steven Pinker
| Category:
Nonfiction, Linguistics |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Putting language and its function into the context of human nature and human development, this is a wonderful book on linguistics. |
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AllReviews |
  1 2 Total 2 pages 12 items |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
This book contains a massive amount of information per chapter, unless this is your area study, every page will reveal new territory. While the author is busy proving that infants are born with an innate instinct to verbally communicate, facts and interesting tidbits are being offered to the reader. The opposing thought to this book is the idea of the mind as a blank slate, that children come into the world and must absorb everything. The author cites numerous studies whereby infants are thought to have an innate idea of objects and number, objects and motion, and are driven to absorb the language of their culture. The result is language is universal to all human cultures, and the language structures are very closely related. This book has spurred me onto pursue Steven Pinker's other writings. One drawback of the book was the sentence diagramming section which was a little too long and overdone. The author provides plenty of ammunition about the language mavens. These self-righteous protectors of the English language that decry its downfall when the language is being used in the common manner. The average speaker on the street because of this innate language instinct can always make himself understood and possesses a sophisticated logic that harks back to when the person was an enfant. Very well written, very informative. |
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Percival Bright (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
I stumbled upon this title last summer while searching Amazon for something interesting to read. Skipping over it at that point for one reason or another, however, I was again recommended this text as a supplement for a Linguistics course in which I am enrolled this fall. This is certainly no textbook in Linguistics, but it does serve as an interesting, easy-to-read work that makes contemporary, Chomsky-driven Linguistics (especially with regard to Universal Grammar and Cognitive Science) highly accessible. Pinker's writing, while sometimes manic and even unclear, still manages to captivate and seize attention easily in the same manner as other recent nonfiction texts (Malcolm Gladwell's are two such examples). With an intended audience of linguistic-laymen readers, Pinker has certainly succeeded in making boring textbook linguistics interesting, in furnishing his text with pertinent examples, and in bringing contemporary linguistics to the masses. As other reviewers have noted, one should remain skeptical and critical of Pinker's proposed theories (as is necessary with all such writing), but I would certainly recommend this text to anyone even slightly interested in the subject. |
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1 2 Total 2 pages 12 items |
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