The Language Instinct
How the Mind Creates Language
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The Language Instinct
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
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By:
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Steven Pinker
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.Critic Reviews
What listeners say about The Language Instinct
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- 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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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- 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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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- S. Galbraith
- 09-05-2024
Fascinating as always from Pinker
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
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