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The Language Instinct

How the Mind Creates Language

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The Language Instinct

By: Steven Pinker
Narrated by: Arthur Morey
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About this listen

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.

©2011 Steven Pinker (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc. Communication & Social Skills History & Philosophy Linguistics Personal Development Philosophy Science Social Sciences Words, Language & Grammar Witty

Critic Reviews

"Pinker writes with acid verve." ( Atlantic Monthly)
"An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written." (Noam Chomsky)
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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.

an insightful book about language and our brain

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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.

If words are you, this book will fascinate

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A fascinating read following Pinker's usual style - A decent amount of theory which may put off a more casual reader but which is instrumental to the arguments being made. Lots of examples are provided to colour the points made. Some though provoking conjecture about what's not yet known.

As for narration, I've never heard a narrator earn their paycheck so hard as Arthur Morey did here - He had to produce various passages from a range of dialects, language disabilities, click language words, non-English phonetic sounds, written formulae. It was all done with skill, well done

Fascinating as always from Pinker

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