The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
Categories: Science & Math
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (1994) by Steven Pinker is a popular science book about language. Pinker argues that the ability to learn and use language is a human instinct, shaped by evolution rather than invented by culture. Drawing on linguistics, psychology and biology, he explains how children acquire grammar, how words and sentences are built and what disorders and pidgin languages reveal about the mind.