The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (88 page)
Read The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language Online
Authors: Steven Pinker
The most exciting new developments in the field come from the genomic revolution. Several genes or genetic loci with a role in language have been identified, confirming that language is genetically complex and not the result of a single lucky mutation. Even more remarkably, there are new techniques that can analyze genetic variation and distinguish genetic changes which have been naturally selected from those which spread by chance. One method is to see whether the nucleotide changes that affect a protein product (and hence are visible to natural selection) are more numerous than the changes that have no function, and hence must be random evolutionary noise. Another is to see whether a gene shows less variability within the members of a single species than it does between different species. Not only does the FOXP2 gene show these fingerprints of selection, but so do several genes involved in auditory processing in humans (but not in chimpanzees), presumably because of the demands of understanding speech.
Another important development is that computational evolutionary linguistics is no longer a one-man enterprise. My colleague Martin Nowak has developed several mathematical models that add teeth to the intuition that some of the basic design features of language confer selective advantages to intelligent social agents. These include syntactic rules that express complex meanings and the so-called duality of patterning, in which phonemes are combined into words and words are combined into sentences.
In 1995, I took part in a conference at UCLA in which Sue Savage-Rumbaugh announced that someday she expected Kanzi (the pygmy chimpanzee she had trained with symbol systems) to be giving her talks for her. We’re still waiting. Though I think that Kanzi and other bonobos can understand and use words with greater reliability than had been shown when I wrote
The Language Instinct
, their ability to combine them remains rudimentary. Indeed, the striking achievements in animal communication have been seen in species that are far more distantly related to us than chimpanzees. The most receptive trainee for an artificial language with a syntax and semantics has been a parrot; the species with the best claim to recursive structure in its signaling has been the starling; the best vocal imitators are birds and dolphins; and when it comes to reading human intentions, chimps are bested by man’s best friend,
Canis familiaris
. This pattern bears out my advisory that it’s a mistake to ask about language in “animals,” as if there were some evolutionary gradient with humans at the top and chimpanzees one rung down. Instead, animals at different positions in the tree of life evolved the cognitive and communicative abilities that are useful to them in their ecological niches. Humans are still the only species that naturally develops a communicative system with a combinatorial syntax and semantics, befitting our unique occupation of the cognitive niche.
In an unusual collaboration, Chomsky wrote a paper in
Science
in 2002 with the comparative psychologists Marc Hauser and Tecumseh Fitch that sought to bridge the rift between linguistics and animal behavior research. The authors distinguished between language in a “broad sense,” namely the entire set of abilities that go into speaking and understanding (concepts, memory, hearing, planning, vocalizing), and language in a “narrow sense,” namely the abilities that are unique to language and unique to humans. They suggested that the broad language faculty contains many abilities we share with other animals, but that the narrow language faculty consists only of syntactic recursion. As I have mentioned, Ray Jackendoff and I were unpersuaded, and expressed our reservations in a debate in the pages of
Cognition
.
Chapter 12: The Language Mavens
. This was by far the most widely noticed chapter in the book. Despite my statement to the contrary, many readers assumed that I was opposed to any kind of encouragement of standard grammar or good style. Some assumed that I was advocating a 1960s-style attitude of doing your own thing, letting it all hang out, and taking a walk on the wild side. As a radical language libertine, I even made an appearance as a character in David Foster Wallace’s novel
Infinite Jest
. In fact the chapter simply publicized what everyone who has studied the history of English soon discovers: many prescriptive rules, despite being cited with an air of dogmatic certitude and haughty one-upmanship, are pure twaddle and have no basis in logic, style, clarity, or literary precedent.
I do feel bad at having had some fun at the expense of the witty writers Richard Lederer and William Safire, especially after
The New Republic
excerpted the chapter with a title and cover that took some gratuitous digs at Safire. When I met him a year later, he was gracious about the episode, and he has occasionally consulted with me for his columns since then. The same cannot be said for John Simon, who surmised in the
National Review
that I was trying to excuse the bad grammar of my uneducated parents.
My call for a language maven who thinks like a linguist has been answered by Jan Freeman, who writes an unfailingly insightful column called “The Word” in
The Boston Globe
(http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/freeman/). And my call for linguists who address style and usage has been answered by Geoffrey Pullum and Mark Liberman in their delightful blog called “Language Log” (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/), with occasional contributions from Geoffrey Nunberg, John McWhorter, and other linguists. (See also the book by Liberman and Pullum that I recommend in “Read on.”)
Chapter 13: Mind Design
. I have expanded the content of this chapter into two books:
How the Mind Works
, which is about the other cognitive and emotional instincts that make up human nature, and
The Blank Slate
, which is about the idea of human nature and its political, moral, and emotional colorings.
If you liked
The Language Instinct
, I think you’ll like these…
Steven Pinker,
How the Mind Works
(1997),
Words and Rules
(1999),
The Blank Slate
(2002),
The Best American Science and Nature Writing
(2004), and
The Stuff of Thought
(2007). Shameless self-promotion.
David Crystal,
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
(2nd ed., 1997) and
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language
(2nd ed., 2003). Not really encyclopedias, but lavishly illustrated, easily browsable, and thoroughly addictive collections of essays on every aspect of language you can imagine.
Judith Rich Harris,
The Nurture Assumption
(1998) and
No Two Alike
(2006). The mystery of what makes us what we are. It’s not just the genes, but it has even less to do with the way our parents brought us up.
John McWhorter,
Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of “Pure” Standard English
(2001), and
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
(2005). More on language, from a linguist with expertise in Creoles, Black English Vernacular, and the relation of language to culture.
Mark Liberman and Geoffrey K. Pullum,
Far from the Madding Gerund, and Other Dispatches from Language Log
(2006). Hilarious, erudite blog postings on linguistics and public life.
Diane McGuinness,
Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading
(1997). Not just a book on pedagogy but a history and explanation of the remarkable invention we call the alphabet.
Thomas Sowell,
Late-Talking Children
(1998) and
The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late
(2002). An unexpected interest of the economist, columnist, historian, and father of a late-talking child.
Bill Bryson,
The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way
(1991). An entertaining history of the language from the well-known humorist and travel writer.
Roger Brown,
Words and Things
(1958). One of the inspirations for this book, from my graduate school adviser.
Rebecca Wheeler (Ed.),
The Workings of Language
(1999), and Stuart Hirschberg and Terry Hirschberg (Eds.),
Reflections on Language
(1999). Essays by linguists and journalists on many aspects of language in the public sphere, including “uptalk,” accents, sex differences, Ebonics, the reading wars, literary style, and the English-only movement.
Nicholas Ostler,
Empires of the World
(2005). A history of the world through the history of its languages.
Maryanne Wolf,
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
(2007). Last-minute addition: another excellent book on the science of reading.
WORDS AND RULES:
THE INGREDIENTS OF LANGUAGE
How does language work, and how do we learn to speak? Why do languages change over time, and why do they have so many quirks and irregularities? In this original and totally entertaining book, written in the same engaging style that illuminated his bestselling classics,
The Language Instinct
and
How the Mind Works
, Steven Pinker explores the profound mysteries of language.
By picking a deceptively simple phenomenon—regular and irregular verbs—Pinker connects an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and the humanities: the history of languages; the theories of Noam Chomsky and his critics; the attempts to create language using computer simulations of neural networks; what there is to learn from children’s grammatical “mistakes”; the latest techniques in identifying genes and imaging the brain; and major ideas in the history of Western philosophy. He makes sense of all this with the help of a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules. His theory extends beyond language and offers insight in the very nature of the human mind.
“A gem.”
—Mark Aronoff,
New York Times Book Review
“Crisp prose and neat analogies,…required reading for anyone interested in cognition and language.”
—Publishers Weekly
Darwin yesterday and today: Ridley 2004.
Chomsky yesterday and today: Barsky 1997; Chomsky & Peck 1987; Collier & Horowitz 2004; McGilvray 2005.
Chomsky et al. vs. Pinker and Jackendoff: Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch 2002; Jackendoff & Pinker 2005; Pinker & Jackendoff 2005; Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky 2005.
Foundations of Language:
Jackendoff 2002.
Pirahã: Everett 2005. Pirahã spirits: http://web.archive.org/web/20001121191700/amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/people.html. Skepticism on Pirahã claims: Commentaries in Everett 2005, Liberman 2006, and Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues 2007.
Ebonics: McWhorter 1999; Pullum 1999.
Nicaraguan Sign Language: Senghas & Coppola 2001; Senghas, Kita, & Özy¨rek 2004.
Do parents matter? Harris 1998, 2006; Pinker 2002, chapter 19.
Poverty of the input: Ritter 2002; Pullum & Scholz 2002.
Williams syndrome: Eckert et al. 2006.
FOXP2 gene: Enard et al. 2002; Shu et al. 2005; Marcus & Fisher 2003.
K family: Vargha-Khadem et al. 1998; Bishop 2002.
Grammatical Specific Language Impairment: van der Lely 2005.
Heritability of language: Stromswold 2001.
Neo-Whorfianism: Gentner & Goldin-Meadow 2003.
Minimalism: Chomsky 1995. Problems with minimalism: Johnson & Lappin 1997; Pinker & Jackendoff 2005; Jackendoff & Pinker 2005. Simpler syntax: Bresnan 1982, Culicover, & Jackendoff 2005.
How children learn the meanings of words: Bloom 1999. Why word learning might be special: Pinker & Jackendoff 2005.
Reading wars: McGuinness 1997; Anderson 2000.
Pirahã again: Everett 2005, which includes several commentaries; Liberman 2006; Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues 2007.
Pirahã recursion: Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues 2007; See also Everett 2007.
Universal Grammar, pro and con: Grain & Thornton 1998; Levinson 2003; Baker 2001; Tomasello 2003. For an archive of language universals, see http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/proj/sprachbau.htm.
Biostatistics and language diversity: Dunn et al. 2005; McMahon & McMahon 2003; McMahon & McMahon 2005; Pennisi 2004a.
Indo-Europeans: Balter 2004.
Genes and languages: Cavalli-Sforza 2000. Skeptical linguists: Pennisi 2004a; McMahon & McMahon 2005; Sims-Williams 1998.
Clicks in Proto-World: Wade 2004; Pennisi 2004b.
Endangered languages: Wuethrich 2000.
How babies talk: Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek 2000.
Early advantage in language learning: Birdsong 1999; Neville & Bavelier 2000; Petitto & Dunbar in press; Senghas & Coppola 2001. Accent: Flege 1999.
Bilingual brains: Kim 1997; Petitto & Dunbar in press; Neville & Bavelier 2000.
Critical period or steady decline: Birdsong 2005.
Adults can’t learn a first language: Mayberry 1993.
Bilingual education, American-style: Garvin 1998; Rossell 2003; Rossell & Baker 1996.
Your brain on language: Dronkers, Pinker, & Damasio 1999; Gazzaniga 2004; Poeppel & Hickok 2004.
Brain on fire: Sahin, Pinker, & Halgren 2006.
Making sense of the brain on language: Hagoort 2005; Hickok & Poeppel 2004.
Wiring the brain: Marcus 2002.
Language evolution: Christiansen & Kirby 2003; Kenneally 2007. Language and the cognitive niche: Pinker 2003; The search for the origins of language: Kenneally 2007.
Genes and language: The SLI Consortium 2002; Dale et al. 1998; Stromswold 2001; Marcus & Fisher 2003.
Natural selection of human genes: Clark et al. 2003; Enard et al. 2002; Sabeti et al. 2006.
Modeling language evolution: Nowak & Komarova 2001.
Kanzi: Savage-Rumbaugh et al. 1993. Evaluating animal language claims: Anderson 2004.
Parrot: Pepperberg 1999. Starlings: Centner et al. 2006, though see also http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003076.htmland http://linguistiist.org/issues/17/17-1528.html. Dolphins: see Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch 2002. Dogs: Hare et al. 2002.
Chomsky et al. vs. Pinker and Jackendoff: Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch 2002; Jackendoff & Pinker 2005; Pinker & Jackendoff 2005; Fitch, Hauser, & Chomsky 2005.