The Language Instinct
Encyclopedia
The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker
for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that human
s are born with an innate capacity for language
. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky
's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar
. In the final chapter Pinker dissents from the skepticism shown by Chomsky that evolution
by natural selection
is up to the challenge of explaining a human language instinct.
is poor, that the quality of language is steadily declining, that language has a heavy influence on a person's possible range of thoughts (the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
), and that nonhuman animals have been taught language (see Great Ape language
). Each of these claims, he argues, is false. Instead, Pinker sees language as an ability unique to humans, produced by evolution
to solve the specific problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He compares language to other species' specialized adaptations such as spider
s' web-weaving or beaver
s' dam-building behavior, calling all three "instinct
s".
By calling language an instinct, Pinker means that it is not a human invention in the sense that metalworking
and even writing
are. While only some human cultures possess these technologies
, all cultures possess language. As further evidence for the universality of language, Pinker notes that children spontaneously invent a consistent grammatical speech (a creole
) even if they grow up among a mixed-culture population speaking an informal trade pidgin
with no consistent rules. Deaf babies "babble" with their hands as others normally do with voice, and spontaneously invent sign language
s with true grammar rather than a crude "me Tarzan, you Jane" pointing system. Language (speech) also develops in the absence of formal instruction or active attempts by parents to correct children's grammar. These signs suggest that rather than being a human invention, language is an innate human ability. Pinker also distinguishes language from humans' general reasoning ability, emphasizing that it is not simply a mark of advanced intelligence but rather a specialized "mental module". He distinguishes the linguist's notion of grammar, such as the placement of adjectives, from formal rules such as those in the American English
writing
style guide
. He argues that because rules like "a preposition is not a proper word to end a sentence with" must be explicitly taught, they are irrelevant to actual communication and should be ignored. Instead, he recommends guides such as The Elements of Style
, which focus on clarity of expression rather than prescriptive rules of grammar.
Pinker attempts to trace the outlines of the language instinct by citing his own studies of language acquisition in children, and the works of many other linguists and psychologists in multiple fields, as well as numerous examples from popular culture. He notes, for instance, that specific types of brain damage cause specific impairments of language such as Broca's aphasia or Wernicke's aphasia, that specific types of grammatical construction are especially hard to understand, and that there seems to be a critical period
in childhood for language development just as there is a critical period for vision development in cats. Much of the book refers to Chomsky's concept of a universal grammar, a meta-grammar into which all human languages fit. Pinker explains that a universal grammar represents specific structures in the human brain that recognize the general rules of other humans' speech, such as whether the local language places adjectives before or after nouns, and begin a specialized and very rapid learning process not explainable as reasoning from first principles
or pure logic. This learning machinery exists only during a specific critical period of childhood and is then disassembled for thrift, freeing resources in an energy-hungry brain.
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
as the work of God. If language and other mental abilities are in fact explainable as products of evolution, as Pinker argues, then appeal to a higher power is not necessary to describe why these abilities exist.
Pinker challenges the fields of astrobiology
and artificial intelligence
as well. If language is a specialized ability evolved by humans' ancestors to aid survival in a particular environment, then a search for human-like intelligence elsewhere in the universe (e.g. SETI
) is as futile as it would be for elephants to conduct a Search for Extra-Terrestrial Trunks and consider all non-trunk-using species inferior. Pinker cites the Loebner Prize
contest in artificial intelligence as evidence that the field is still far from achieving meaningful conversational ability or even plausible parsing
of ordinary typed English
. (Contest entrants claim that their chatterbot
approach to conversation is steadily advancing and achieving practical results.)
Pinker's arguments mesh with his other books, How the Mind Works
(a discussion of a wide range of mental abilities as specialized evolution-built modules) and The Blank Slate
(a denial that humans are shaped purely by culture rather than instinct). His claims are also similar to those of Edward O. Wilson (Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
), Richard Dawkins
(The Selfish Gene
), Howard Bloom
(The Lucifer Principle
) and Richard Brodie (Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme). Each of these thinkers argue for sociobiology
, the concept that human behavior and thought are best explained in terms of evolution of genes and memes
. Collectively, these attempts to apply evolutionary theory to psychology are known simply as evolutionary psychology
. Because sociobiology/evolutionary psychology challenges traditional notions of the nature of thought, morality and emotion, the field remains controversial.
, Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate
, has been dedicated mostly to the critique of Pinker's work. The notion of the brain/mind as a set of modules with irreplaceably distinct functions, including linguistic functions, is said to be disproved by recoveries after stroke and surgical brain hemisphere removal. A TV show "Evolve" claimed for the thesis of a uniquely human language module in the brain to be disproved with brain scans of chattering chimpanzees, which supposedly showed the same pattern of brain activity as talking humans.
The statement that deaf babies "spontaneously invent sign languages with complex grammar" is actually only true in groups of deaf children (deaf communities) while a lone deaf child in a village where everyone else can hear never invents more than simple gestures. This actually supports a view of language as a social adaptation evolutionary kludge
.
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
s are born with an innate capacity for language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar
Universal grammar
Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught...
. In the final chapter Pinker dissents from the skepticism shown by Chomsky that evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
by natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
is up to the challenge of explaining a human language instinct.
Thesis
Pinker sets out to disabuse the reader of a number of common ideas about language, e.g. that children must be taught to use it, that most people's grammarGrammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
is poor, that the quality of language is steadily declining, that language has a heavy influence on a person's possible range of thoughts (the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
Linguistic relativity
The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view...
), and that nonhuman animals have been taught language (see Great Ape language
Great Ape language
Research into non-human great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans to communicate with human beings and with each other using sign language, physical tokens, and lexigrams; see Yerkish...
). Each of these claims, he argues, is false. Instead, Pinker sees language as an ability unique to humans, produced by evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
to solve the specific problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He compares language to other species' specialized adaptations such as spider
Spider
Spiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...
s' web-weaving or beaver
Beaver
The beaver is a primarily nocturnal, large, semi-aquatic rodent. Castor includes two extant species, North American Beaver and Eurasian Beaver . Beavers are known for building dams, canals, and lodges . They are the second-largest rodent in the world...
s' dam-building behavior, calling all three "instinct
Instinct
Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a...
s".
By calling language an instinct, Pinker means that it is not a human invention in the sense that metalworking
Metalworking
Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills,...
and even writing
Writing
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
are. While only some human cultures possess these technologies
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
, all cultures possess language. As further evidence for the universality of language, Pinker notes that children spontaneously invent a consistent grammatical speech (a creole
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
) even if they grow up among a mixed-culture population speaking an informal trade pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
with no consistent rules. Deaf babies "babble" with their hands as others normally do with voice, and spontaneously invent sign language
Sign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
s with true grammar rather than a crude "me Tarzan, you Jane" pointing system. Language (speech) also develops in the absence of formal instruction or active attempts by parents to correct children's grammar. These signs suggest that rather than being a human invention, language is an innate human ability. Pinker also distinguishes language from humans' general reasoning ability, emphasizing that it is not simply a mark of advanced intelligence but rather a specialized "mental module". He distinguishes the linguist's notion of grammar, such as the placement of adjectives, from formal rules such as those in the American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
writing
Writing
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
style guide
Style guide
A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field...
. He argues that because rules like "a preposition is not a proper word to end a sentence with" must be explicitly taught, they are irrelevant to actual communication and should be ignored. Instead, he recommends guides such as The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...
, which focus on clarity of expression rather than prescriptive rules of grammar.
Pinker attempts to trace the outlines of the language instinct by citing his own studies of language acquisition in children, and the works of many other linguists and psychologists in multiple fields, as well as numerous examples from popular culture. He notes, for instance, that specific types of brain damage cause specific impairments of language such as Broca's aphasia or Wernicke's aphasia, that specific types of grammatical construction are especially hard to understand, and that there seems to be a critical period
Critical period
This article is about a critical period in an organism's or person's development. See also America's Critical Period.In general, a critical period is a limited time in which an event can occur, usually to result in some kind of transformation...
in childhood for language development just as there is a critical period for vision development in cats. Much of the book refers to Chomsky's concept of a universal grammar, a meta-grammar into which all human languages fit. Pinker explains that a universal grammar represents specific structures in the human brain that recognize the general rules of other humans' speech, such as whether the local language places adjectives before or after nouns, and begin a specialized and very rapid learning process not explainable as reasoning from first principles
First principles
In philosophy, a first principle is a basic, foundational proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. In mathematics, first principles are referred to as axioms or postulates...
or pure logic. This learning machinery exists only during a specific critical period of childhood and is then disassembled for thrift, freeing resources in an energy-hungry brain.
Implications
The implications of the language-instinct hypothesis are far-reaching. Language and similar abilities are some of the traits that most clearly set humans apart from other animals, and have been claimed by thinkers such as Alfred Russel WallaceAlfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
as the work of God. If language and other mental abilities are in fact explainable as products of evolution, as Pinker argues, then appeal to a higher power is not necessary to describe why these abilities exist.
Pinker challenges the fields of astrobiology
Astrobiology
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. This interdisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our Solar System and habitable planets outside our Solar System, the search for evidence of prebiotic chemistry,...
and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
as well. If language is a specialized ability evolved by humans' ancestors to aid survival in a particular environment, then a search for human-like intelligence elsewhere in the universe (e.g. SETI
SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life...
) is as futile as it would be for elephants to conduct a Search for Extra-Terrestrial Trunks and consider all non-trunk-using species inferior. Pinker cites the Loebner Prize
Loebner prize
The Loebner Prize is an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the chatterbot considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test. In each round, a human judge simultaneously holds textual conversations...
contest in artificial intelligence as evidence that the field is still far from achieving meaningful conversational ability or even plausible parsing
Parsing
In computer science and linguistics, parsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens , to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar...
of ordinary typed English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. (Contest entrants claim that their chatterbot
Chatterbot
A chatter robot, chatterbot, chatbot, or chat bot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods, primarily for engaging in small talk. The primary aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking...
approach to conversation is steadily advancing and achieving practical results.)
Pinker's arguments mesh with his other books, How the Mind Works
How the Mind Works
How the Mind Works is a book by Canadian-American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, published in 1997. The book attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms...
(a discussion of a wide range of mental abilities as specialized evolution-built modules) and The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations...
(a denial that humans are shaped purely by culture rather than instinct). His claims are also similar to those of Edward O. Wilson (Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is a 1998 book by biologist E. O. Wilson. In this book, Wilson discusses methods that have been used to unite the sciences and might in the future unite them with the humanities...
), Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
(The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the...
), Howard Bloom
Howard Bloom
Howard Bloom is an American author. He was a publicist in the 1970s and 1980s for singers and bands such as Prince, Billy Joel, and Styx. In 1988 he became disabled with chronic fatigue syndrome...
(The Lucifer Principle
The Lucifer Principle
The Lucifer Principle is a book by Howard Bloom. It sees a social group, not an individual, as a main subject of human evolution. It "explores the intricate relationships among genetics, human behavior, and culture" and argues that "evil is a by-product of nature's strategies for creation and that...
) and Richard Brodie (Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme). Each of these thinkers argue for sociobiology
Sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...
, the concept that human behavior and thought are best explained in terms of evolution of genes and memes
Memetics
Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, is essentially a "unit of...
. Collectively, these attempts to apply evolutionary theory to psychology are known simply as evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
. Because sociobiology/evolutionary psychology challenges traditional notions of the nature of thought, morality and emotion, the field remains controversial.
Criticism
Pinker's assumptions about the innateness of language have been challenged; opponents claim that "either the logic is fallacious, or the factual data are incorrect (or, sometimes, both)". A book by Geoffrey SampsonGeoffrey Sampson
Geoffrey Sampson is Professor of Natural Language Computing in the Department of Informatics, University of Sussex....
, Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate
Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate
Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate is a book by Geoffrey Sampson, providing arguments against Noam Chomsky's theory of a human instinct for language acquisition. Sampson explains the original title of the book as a deliberate allusion to Educating Rita , and uses the plot of that play...
, has been dedicated mostly to the critique of Pinker's work. The notion of the brain/mind as a set of modules with irreplaceably distinct functions, including linguistic functions, is said to be disproved by recoveries after stroke and surgical brain hemisphere removal. A TV show "Evolve" claimed for the thesis of a uniquely human language module in the brain to be disproved with brain scans of chattering chimpanzees, which supposedly showed the same pattern of brain activity as talking humans.
The statement that deaf babies "spontaneously invent sign languages with complex grammar" is actually only true in groups of deaf children (deaf communities) while a lone deaf child in a village where everyone else can hear never invents more than simple gestures. This actually supports a view of language as a social adaptation evolutionary kludge
Kludge
A kludge is a workaround, a quick-and-dirty solution, a clumsy or inelegant, yet effective, solution to a problem, typically using parts that are cobbled together...
.
External links
- Pinker's website on The Language Instinct
- A review (PDF document) by Randy Harris for The Globe and MailThe Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
. - Sampson's website on The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate