The Language Instinct: Steven Pinker’s book The Language Instinct was published in 1994 and is aimed at a wide readership. According to Pinker, people are born with the ability to communicate.
The Language Instinct: He agrees with Noam Chomsky that all human languages exhibit indications of a universal grammar, but he disagrees with Chomsky’s belief that evolutionary theory can explain the human language instinct.
Pinker criticizes several commonly held beliefs about language, including that children must be taught to use it, that most people’s grammar is poor, that language quality is steadily declining, and that the type of linguistic facilities provided by a language (for example, some languages have words for light and dark but no words for colors) has a significant impact on a person’s potential (see Great ape language). Pinker regards language as a human-only skill that evolved to overcome the challenge of social communication among social hunter-gatherers.
The Language Instinct: When Pinker refers to language as an instinct, he implies that it is not a human creation in the same way that metalworking or even writing is. While just a few human societies have these tools, everyone has the language. Pinker observes that even if they grow up in a mixed-culture community speaking an informal trade pidgin with no consistent rules, children spontaneously develop a consistent grammatical speech (a creole) even if they say an informal trade pidgin no consistent rules. Deaf newborns “babble” with their hands in the same way that was hearing babies do with their voices, and they develop sign languages with simple grammar rather than a crude “me Tarzan, you Jane” system.
The Language Instinct: In the absence of formal teaching or active parental attempts to improve children’s grammar, language (speech) evolves. These signs imply that language is an intrinsic human skill rather than a human creation. Pinker further differentiates language from humans’ general thinking capacity, emphasizing a specialized “mental module” rather than a sign of superior intellect. He contrasts between linguists’ ideas of grammar, such as the arrangement of adjectives, and formal standards like those found in the American English writing style guide.
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