Author: Steven Pinker

Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics; 1st Perenn edition

Pub. in: November, 2000

ISBN: 0060958332

Pages: 544

Measurements: 8 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches

Origin of product: USA

Order code: BA00568

Other information:  

The book won the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America.

For a non-technical and non-orthodox introduction to the origins and characteristics of language this book is excellent. It could be read by anyone who is curious about linguistics as understood by an expert, but whose ideas on the subject are considered somewhat unconventional from the standpoint of modern research in linguistics. Indeed, the very title of this book may raise many an eyebrow from some entrenched schools of modern linguistics. The author though has written a highly interested book here, and after reading it one carries away a deep appreciation of the complexities of language.

Some of more interesting and surprising facts that are discussed in the book include: 1) There has never been a tribe or group discovered that does not use language, and there is no evidence that a particular geographical region has acted as source of language that is spread to groups that previously did not use language. These facts do lend credence to the author's thesis that language is instinctual. 2) The level of industrialization or technology of a society apparently is not correlated with the complexity of the language used by that society. Examples of this are given, such as the Bantu language in Tanzania, whose resemblance to English is compared to the difference between chess and checkers. In addition, the author dispels the myth that individuals in the "lower classes" of society do not speak as eloquently or with as much sophistication as the "middle classes". The Black English Vernacular or BEV is cited as an example, and the author quotes studies that indicate higher frequency of grammatical sentences in working-class speech than in middle-class speech. 3) As further evidence to support his thesis that language is instinctual, the author points to the universality of language and language development in children (the latter being his specialty). Interestingly, he states that children reinvent language not because they are "smart" but because "they can't help it." In more than one place in the book he expresses his belief that intelligence is not needed for the acquisition of language. If it indeed it is not, this gives an interesting twist to the current efforts in artificial intelligence to produce machines that are capable of ordinary language. A machine therefore may be designated as "intelligent" even though it does not have ordinary language capabilities. An immediate consequence of this is that one cannot take the absence of the language ability in machines as evidence that they are not intelligent, as is done many times in the literature that is critical of AI. 4) The discussion of "pidgins" and the "creole" that results when children make them their native tongue. The author cites the construction of these creoles as further evidence of his thesis, for children can take the simple pidgin word strings and without any coaching develop a highly sophisticated, very expressive language. Another example of a pidgin, also discussed by the author, is the independent development of sign language by deaf Nicaraguan children after the failure of teaching them speech reading. This eventually resulted in the Lenguaje de Signos Nicaraguense or LSN that is used to this day.

It remains to be seen whether the author's thesis will eventually be accepted by future linguists. Further research in neuroscience will no doubt shed light on the real origins of language, and once understood natural language capabilities will no doubt be implemented very straightforwardly in the machines, whether or not it is advantageous or not to have machines with these capabilities. (From quoting Lee Carlson, USA)

Target readers: General readers

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