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The Language Instinct
- How the Mind Creates Language
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
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No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.
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Publisher's Summary
In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution.
The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.
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- David
- 06-06-2016
an insightful book about language and our brain
this book brings many new perspectives of language. it also explained a lot of things i didn't understand when acquiring English as a second language.
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- Paul Maconochie
- 08-02-2020
If words are you, this book will fascinate
If you are interested in language, writing, words, developmental psychology or neuroscience, this book will fascinate you. I came to it having read Pinker's "The Sense of Style" and was riveted, mostly, from start to end. Although targeted at a lay audience I found some of the grammatical analysis a bit technical and skimmed it without losing the thrust of the book. Pinker argues that language is hardwired into human beings in a way that is unique from any other animal. He cites "universal grammar", the physical impossibility of being able to know every combination of available words i.e. the brain has hardwired rules for language recognition, and deaf children spontaneously creating their own, fully grammatical languages, as evidence. At 483 pages or nearly 19 hours as an audible book this is not a short read but it is immensely rewarding and stimulating.
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