The Language Instinct
  • Published: 22 April 2015
  • ISBN: 9780141980775
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $30.00

The Language Instinct

How the Mind Creates Language

Formats & editions
Paperback
22 Apr 2015
EBook
27 Feb 2003
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How do babies learn to speak? Why are there so many languages? Do we think in our mother tongue? Who decides what's correct English? How did language evolve?  In this landmark book, Pinker explains the mysteries of language within a coherent theory: that language is an adaptation for communication.

'Dazzling... Pinker's big idea is that language is an instinct...as innate to us as flying is to geese... Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations'
- Independent

'A marvellously readable book... illuminates every facet of human language: its biological origin, its uniqueness to humanity, it acquisition by children, its grammatical structure, the production and perception of speech, the pathology of language disorders and the unstoppable evolution of languages and dialects' - Nature
  • Published: 22 April 2015
  • ISBN: 9780141980775
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $30.00
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About the author

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.

http://stevenpinker.com

portrait photo of Steven Pinker

Also by Steven Pinker

The Sense of Style
Enlightenment Now
The Better Angels of Our Nature
Rationality
Learnability and Cognition, new edition
The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television
The Stuff of Thought
See all