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roe_'s review
Obviously outdated in quite a few ways by now, and still can't say I fully agree with all of Pinker's conclusions but there's some vaguely fun trivia in here
finhatfield's review
3.0
just a few thoughts,
Why does Steven Pinker reference Woody Allen like 3 times?
On page 364 he states that "babies become human at three months when their larynx descends to a position low in their throats"- What are babies before three months?
Why does Steven Pinker reference Woody Allen like 3 times?
On page 364 he states that "babies become human at three months when their larynx descends to a position low in their throats"- What are babies before three months?
tani's review
4.0
More properly, this would be a 3.5. I really enjoyed the early parts of the book, and they were a solid 4 stars. However, the book dragged at the end, and that would warrant more of a 3 star rating.
I'm not a linguist. I just have a passing interest in the subject, so I can't really comment on the validity of Pinker's arguments. I can say that what he argued made sense to me most of the time, with a few small exceptions, and I wouldn't be surprised if he is mostly correct. But I'm not an expert. So, there's that.
As for writing style, Pinker does pretty well. As I said above, the book started very well for me. I think Pinker has an engaging writing style and that he uses examples to illustrate his points quite well. Unfortunately, he does sometimes get bogged down in the minutiae. I understand that the grammar discussions were important to make his point, but I felt like the way he just threw you into them was a bit abrupt. I spent a good long while reading grammar descriptions without being sure what the ultimate point was going to be. That may have been a problem with my reading, but I think Pinker could also have been more upfront about where he was going with it.
Either way, I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it for language geeks like myself. At times it may be a bit technical, but as long as you keep on keeping on, you'll come out with a broader understanding of the language mechanism in human beings.
I'm not a linguist. I just have a passing interest in the subject, so I can't really comment on the validity of Pinker's arguments. I can say that what he argued made sense to me most of the time, with a few small exceptions, and I wouldn't be surprised if he is mostly correct. But I'm not an expert. So, there's that.
As for writing style, Pinker does pretty well. As I said above, the book started very well for me. I think Pinker has an engaging writing style and that he uses examples to illustrate his points quite well. Unfortunately, he does sometimes get bogged down in the minutiae. I understand that the grammar discussions were important to make his point, but I felt like the way he just threw you into them was a bit abrupt. I spent a good long while reading grammar descriptions without being sure what the ultimate point was going to be. That may have been a problem with my reading, but I think Pinker could also have been more upfront about where he was going with it.
Either way, I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it for language geeks like myself. At times it may be a bit technical, but as long as you keep on keeping on, you'll come out with a broader understanding of the language mechanism in human beings.
jhen's review
challenging
funny
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Absolutely brilliant. A must for linguists or computational linguists. Or anyone interested in neuroscience/psychology.
bupdaddy's review
5.0
I think this took me long enough.
In my defense, I'm kind of stupid.
So he's convinced me that humans have a language instinct. And it's not arrogant, it's just objective observation in the same way that one might observe that bees have an instinct for understanding waggle dances.
I also like all the take downs of prescriptive grammarians who think knowing about splitting infinitives and ending sentences in prepositions makes them better than everyone else, because I'm petty and insecure, so I can't wait until my brother corrects me for saying "everyone got their dinner," and when he says "his or her dinner," asking him to correct, "I served everyone dinner before you even seated them."
My one teensy-weensy niggle, and it's more in the spirit of science - when someone lifts their hypothesis up, anyone and everyone is duty-bound to take shots at it - is that while I agree he showed humans have a language instinct, I feel like he also claimed no other animals do. And his discussion of that is that we look at chimpanzees and bonobos, expecting to find similarities in everything, even though our most recent common ancestor is maybe ~7mya. He compares it to elephants with their incredibly talented noses looking tirelessly for similar rudimentary talents in tapirs or whatever extant animal elephants are most closely related to.
What's the problem? Nobody said that because the most closely related living animal doesn't have it, you're unique. Alex, that damned bird, understood a thing or two, and his most recent common ancestor with us lived in the Triassic or late Permian. I'll grant it's nothing like our complexity, but noun plus verb = grammar. And adjectives tied to nouns are noun phrases. What that animal was doing revealed something going on in his mind that could map sound labels to meaning in groups. That's language. Or proto-language. Or something. I mean, he was constructing original combinations to get what was inside his brain into somebody else's!
So debunking Koko (I yield to Pinker, because I honestly don't know enough about Koko's signing to know if the many skeptics or the many believers were right) doesn't disprove non-human language. Granted, it's easy to take the non-falsifiable position that "nobody has shown non-human language doesn't exist," so I will take the slightly more falsifiable position that at least some birds can apply abstract labels to meaning in noun and verb combinations. That crosses the threshold for language, IMO.
And I think it makes sense, evolutionarily, since bird calls apparently accomplish a lot in a bird's life. Species identification, individual identification, tribal identification, alarms, etc.
Omigod. Dinosaurs can talk.
In my defense, I'm kind of stupid.
So he's convinced me that humans have a language instinct. And it's not arrogant, it's just objective observation in the same way that one might observe that bees have an instinct for understanding waggle dances.
I also like all the take downs of prescriptive grammarians who think knowing about splitting infinitives and ending sentences in prepositions makes them better than everyone else, because I'm petty and insecure, so I can't wait until my brother corrects me for saying "everyone got their dinner," and when he says "his or her dinner," asking him to correct, "I served everyone dinner before you even seated them."
My one teensy-weensy niggle, and it's more in the spirit of science - when someone lifts their hypothesis up, anyone and everyone is duty-bound to take shots at it - is that while I agree he showed humans have a language instinct, I feel like he also claimed no other animals do. And his discussion of that is that we look at chimpanzees and bonobos, expecting to find similarities in everything, even though our most recent common ancestor is maybe ~7mya. He compares it to elephants with their incredibly talented noses looking tirelessly for similar rudimentary talents in tapirs or whatever extant animal elephants are most closely related to.
What's the problem? Nobody said that because the most closely related living animal doesn't have it, you're unique. Alex, that damned bird, understood a thing or two, and his most recent common ancestor with us lived in the Triassic or late Permian. I'll grant it's nothing like our complexity, but noun plus verb = grammar. And adjectives tied to nouns are noun phrases. What that animal was doing revealed something going on in his mind that could map sound labels to meaning in groups. That's language. Or proto-language. Or something. I mean, he was constructing original combinations to get what was inside his brain into somebody else's!
So debunking Koko (I yield to Pinker, because I honestly don't know enough about Koko's signing to know if the many skeptics or the many believers were right) doesn't disprove non-human language. Granted, it's easy to take the non-falsifiable position that "nobody has shown non-human language doesn't exist," so I will take the slightly more falsifiable position that at least some birds can apply abstract labels to meaning in noun and verb combinations. That crosses the threshold for language, IMO.
And I think it makes sense, evolutionarily, since bird calls apparently accomplish a lot in a bird's life. Species identification, individual identification, tribal identification, alarms, etc.
Omigod. Dinosaurs can talk.
arielamandah's review
2.0
Didn't finish this one. Oh well. The description made it sound very, very interesting, but it just didn't engage me. Nuggets of relevance amid mountains and mountains of sentence diagramming and deconstruction. Don't expect to go back and finish it either. Oh well.
floralfox's review
4.0
Pinker writes in a way that is easily understandable by those who do not have such a science-based background, and his anecdotes and examples make the read interesting for how long it is. The ideas presented are fascinating and made me want to read more on the subject by his opposers and Chomsky.
anotherpath's review
4.0
I really enjoy Pinker's perspective on things. He's the one rationalist that I have the upmost respect for, because all of the positions and thoughts that he has have clearly been painstakingly generated by a vivid and sharp mind. This is the second in his body of work that I've made my way through, and just as I was with the first book, I'm better for having done so.
This book is all about language. Throughout the chapters Pinker describes the evolution and characteristics of language, all while arguing in support of his thesis that language must be GENE-based.
Because of this, other animals of high-intelligence don't actually have the ability to construct language in the same way that humans do. Because of this there are highly intelligent people rendered dumb by the written word. Because of this there are mentally handicapped people who are capable of great speech patterning.
My personal instinct is to find in this gene the Divine spark of Intelligence. This is one of the great God genes. I'm not here to argue that Natural Selection doesn't deliver us the mechanisms we carry with us, I'm just arguing that NS points in a singular direction, and that language of a sort is necessary as one of the hurdles of that development, and WE as a species were blessed with that.
"In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with WITH GOD and the WORD WAS GOD."
Pinker would cringe to see me abuse his work this way, and he has a whole chapter dedicated to people not isolating this as yet another instance of divinely inspired human superiority. That's not how a true believer should see it, they should Language as a manifestation of the divine that our evolutionary path chanced upon luckily. I'm grateful for it.
Pinker, like all Rationalists, throws the baby out with the bathwater as soon as he's taken the temperature of it. This book is great, written by one of the greatest thinking minds of today. I highly recommend it, it's held up.
This book is all about language. Throughout the chapters Pinker describes the evolution and characteristics of language, all while arguing in support of his thesis that language must be GENE-based.
Because of this, other animals of high-intelligence don't actually have the ability to construct language in the same way that humans do. Because of this there are highly intelligent people rendered dumb by the written word. Because of this there are mentally handicapped people who are capable of great speech patterning.
My personal instinct is to find in this gene the Divine spark of Intelligence. This is one of the great God genes. I'm not here to argue that Natural Selection doesn't deliver us the mechanisms we carry with us, I'm just arguing that NS points in a singular direction, and that language of a sort is necessary as one of the hurdles of that development, and WE as a species were blessed with that.
"In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with WITH GOD and the WORD WAS GOD."
Pinker would cringe to see me abuse his work this way, and he has a whole chapter dedicated to people not isolating this as yet another instance of divinely inspired human superiority. That's not how a true believer should see it, they should Language as a manifestation of the divine that our evolutionary path chanced upon luckily. I'm grateful for it.
Pinker, like all Rationalists, throws the baby out with the bathwater as soon as he's taken the temperature of it. This book is great, written by one of the greatest thinking minds of today. I highly recommend it, it's held up.
peelspls's review
4.0
A great introductory perspective on linguistics, particularly since it made the psychology/neuroscience of it available to a lay-person.