Rating: 
Summary: Pinker delivers a (Chomsky's) point.
Review: I rate this book the maximum because it contains a seminal point. One that, once assimilated, enriches a person's understanding of reality. Language (singular) in general, not specific languages (plural), is an innate, genetically induced behavior in our species. Pinker's predecessor Noam Chomsky hit upon this notion and Pinker has taken up the torch in this book describing specifically what Chomsky originally formulated. Languages (plural), such as Mandarin Chinese and Castillian Spanish are not innate but arbitray. On the other hand the language ability (singular) is not arbitrary but a highly innate neural mode of cognizing and communicating which is generated by Wernicke's, Broca's, and other neuronal groups in the brain. In short, language is an innate genetic function of our hominid bodies, much as flying is to sea gulls. It's an instinct. Pinker proves this over and over in this book by citing experimental data, negative control pathology examples, and other analogies in the real world (such as the language behavior of the deaf). Knowing that language is a genetically induced, innate instinct helps one to cut through a lot of other fluff about consciousness, language, the animal kingdom, etc., which allows for more rapid passage from the premises of animal behavior to conclusions about their causes and effects.This book is also not a bad science read in general, If you can get past the stuffiness of the grammarian (a few pots of coffee won't hurt) some excellent, very relevent points are made along the way. Beside the primary and most valuable thesis of this book, that language (singular....not languages, plural) is a genetic event in the same vein as eye color, Pinker makes the sagacious observations that BEV (black english vernacular) is as bonified a language as continental French or Castillian Spanish; a useful tool to have when debating racists. We also soon find, thanks to Pinker's excellent linguistic knowledge base, that there is no 'proper usage' in the cultural employment of language. Like many cultural phenomena, morals, fashion, etc., language is defined by statistical (popular) usage. It's funny and fitting to see Pinker's dishing of language mavens who lament the degradation of the current King's language. Why if this were the case, we'd still be speaking colonial era English. While language (singular) may be a genetically coded biological phenomenon in our species, individual languages (plural) are diverse, dynamic, evolving, and everything but static. The laying out of the rules of grammer in this book can get quite tedious, but the book's most redeeming feature is that it drives home the very pertinent biological axiom about human behavior in terms of our linguistic activity, with some nice sidebars on insider linguistics jargon. It's this type of science writing that enriches the lay reader and makes being a bibliophile a healthy addiction.
Rating: 
Summary: highly enjoyable but too chomskyan
Review: pinker is one of the most fun-to-read popular science authors currently on the scene (how the mind works and words and rules are also enjoyable, tho w&r less so than either lg instinct or htmw). therefore, his book is a good place to start for the person interested in language and linguistics but with little or no background. for those with little background, tho, some of the going may get a bit rough, as pinker goes fairly deep into one particular theory of language, closely related to the ideas of pinker's MIT colleague noam chomsky. while i respect both pinker and chomsky, i find both of them to pay far too little attention to how languages change over time and to how 'exotic' languages like navajo, finnish, and ingush work. chapter 12 provides a pretty good (tho occasionally angry) antidote to people who insist on answering 'can i go to the bathroom?' with 'i don't if you can, but you may'.
Rating:
Summary: Inspirational
Review: The enlightened Stephen Pinker delivers a masterful compendium on linguistic theory that is truly enjoyable to read. His fine use of wit and literary fluency makes this book very enjoyable and emulates the great Richard Dawkins in the way that it seeks (and succeeds) in reaching the layman, the student, and the academician. To put it bluntly, I had never been interested in Linguistics. It seemed to be a stuffy field of repetition of high school "grammar". When assigned to read this book for a Cognitive Development Psychology course, I approached it with dread. It turned out to be the highlight of my current academic quarter. Pinker, using clean evidence to back his claims, makes some wonderful assertions about Linguistics. This book, couched in the fascinating field of evolutionary psychology, does a good job of explaining the formation and foibles of a Universal Language. He justly attacks the ridiculously ingrained Standard Social Science Model of Language and delivers a cohesive explanation from a Psychologically oriented perspective. Unlike what most critics state, Pinker does NOT say that genes are the only basis of language, but rather supports the fundamental basis of evolutionary psychology. It goes a bit like this: the environment of our hunter-gatherer ancestors selected for certain genes to proliferate. These genes code us to synthesize certain proteins at certain times in our development to form certain physiological mechanisms (arms, lungs, brain, etc). Of these, he argues that the brain is not a general purpose processing tool but rather a domain specific one with an appropriate "Language Center". This causes us to have an innate mechanism for language and, therefore, an innate "Mentalese" and a Universal Grammar. HOWEVER - he also says that culture is necessary!! Without culture, one could never learn the particulars of their own language and, after a certain developmental threshold, would be without any specific language. I apologize for the length of this endorsement. It just seemed that some possible, deconstructive critiques could seem compelling without some understanding of what Pinker was really getting at - the inherent beauty of human language and our "instinct" for it. So, if you skimmed this recommendation, know only this: "THIS BOOK IS WONDERFUL AND COVERS A GREAT RANGE AND DEPTH OF LINGUISTICS. A FUN AND INSPIRATIONAL READ".
Rating: 
Summary: One entrance to an inexhaustible subject.
Review: As a "descriptive-linguist-observer-scientist," Pinker makes a number of observations about human development and language that are of interest but few that seem all that penetrating or edifying. (Tell me things, Stephen, that I didn't already know or couldn't easily have figured out for myself.) Moreover, he never, to my mind, establishes a clear distinction between thought and language (assuming there is one), so that in effect he seems to be saying little more than all human beings are born with the capacity to "think," to interpret their own experience. Finally, one wishes he could complement his scientific curiosity with a "theological" or critical one as well. The Gospel of John asserts that in the beginning was the "Word," which became human. If language, then, can be claimed as a "gift," as our spiritual inheritance, then it follows that language is capable of being "abused," possibly even wasted. What counts equally as much as the phenomenon of language is the way it is organized, codified, and reinvented by humans. If all cultures and civilizations have had the same access to "language," not all have exhibited the same responsiveness (as Shakespeare's, for example) to "rhetoric" and its potential to the fullest realization of the world of self. I wonder why this is--but I doubt that Pinker, for all his enthusiastic descriptivism, gives the question much thought.
Rating:
Summary: Well written, Informative - this book is not a light read.
Review: Contrary to Pinkner's statement in his preface "this book is meant for everyone" this book is not a layman's read. Those who are linguist, lexicographers, grammarians and, the syntaxes word lovers will appreciate this work. At the core of Pinkner's' book is his defense of his thesis that language is biologically based. Well written, highly informative, book on the science of language. Conditionally recommended
Rating:
Summary: A marvelous and beautifully written work.
Review: I can't say I know enough about linguistics to offer any deep "academic" criticism of this book, but I will say this: I simply couldn't put it down. Pinker's writing style sweepingly breezes through the mind, and the deep insights he offers are often presented with a smile.
Rating:
Summary: Pinker is obviously right!
Review: I do not understand how other reviewers could say Pinker's idea has not been proved. It seems to me that Pinker's thesis is obviously correct, by definition.let me explain. just think about the complexity of language learning and understanding. Every computer scientists, who tries making a computer capable of understanding, knows two things for sure: 1.some abilities must be given as INNATE. Every programme must be based on some innate rules to work, such as the concept of time, of motion, of cause and effect. 2. The problem of understanding complex language is a computationally DIFFICULT one, because you have to examine many patterns , which may or may not be connected to each other, and if they are, the programme has to find the general rule to which they obey, via "abstraction" , or more precisely via a process called "induction". The computer program must also discard all the meaningless common patterns between the data samples : for example when you'll hear the word BALL and you see a red ball falling on the ground, after been thrown by a kid, the programme must understand that the colour of the ball doesn't matter, the effect that it is falling doesn't matter, that the kid doesn't matter. He can do that only after seeing many samples, and has to be capable of abstraction, induction. This capability is needed just for understanding the meaning of nouns, not to talk about the many other parts of the sentence, and what is more important, the structure of the sentence. So language understanding and world understanding are very complex problems, and the brain, although it is very slow in many other problems, solves those problem perfectly. This is very suspicious. Why do they solve those problems so efficiently? Many computer scientists will say: because the computers are sequential machines, and brains are mainly parallel computational machines, which are especially suited for that kind of problems, such as pattern recognition. But this answer is wrong, because DOG's brains are also parallel machines, but dogs don't understand language, apart from single words that any neural network can understand. So, Why is that? obviously, there must be something in the STRUCTURE of the brain - that is unique to humans- that helps understanding language. And what in the world can account for the body structure, the brain structure? Genes. What else? That is true by definition. Genes are the only thing that can account for the structural our body. So Pinker's thesis is nothing more than tautology, in my opinion. Obviously, many reviewers don't think it is tautology, so I must conclude that I have not understood their point very well, so I apologise for simplifying things too much. Please let me know what you think. I also have not finished the book so far. Maurizio Colucci seguso@tiscalinet.it
Rating:
Summary: simply brilliant
Review: "The Language Instinct" is probably the most enjoyable book that I have ever read about language. From start to finish, the author entertained while skilfully carving out a compelling case for why he believes that man has a unique gift for language learning. Whether you are a linguist, a sociologist, a neurologist, a language lover, or a fan of popular culture, there is something in this book for you. Pinker is erudite and eclectic, covering everything from Chomsky, grammar genes, children's language, Creoles, aphasics and the origin and evolution of language, to George Bush, Gary Larsen, Woody Allen, the Hill Street Blues, the Sapir-Whorf Great Eskimo Hoax, and Orwellian Newspeak. I liked this book not just because of the excellent way that Pinker presented his scientific argument, but also because of its richness about language and life in general. If there were one person that I could choose to invite to a cocktail party, it would be Steven Pinker. Do I believe everything he writes? Of course not!
Rating:
Summary: an interesting take on language and learning
Review: The idea of an innate human understanding of language is pretty controversial in academic circles so don't take this without a grain of salt, but... I found Language Instinct very readable, and full of excelent examples. In particular the discussion of pidgin vs. creole languages and how quickly fully gramatical languages show up even when no "teacher" is available is striking. It definitely makes you think about the changes that take place in young brains as they pick up language cues, as well as, the seeming universals in the variety of those languages. Pinker ends with a more speculative discussion of how the brain may be thought of as a set of interacting problem solving tools, evolved over millions of years.
Rating: 
Summary: An object lesson in brainwashing
Review: People should read this book if only as an object lesson in how a racy style, a sometimes condescending humour, and breadth of learning can lure readers into suspending their critical judgement as well as their rationality. Others have already criticized Pinker for presenting a controversial view as undisputed fact. But there is worse than this. The brilliance of the writing conceals misleading accounts of research, elementary ignorance and patent nonsense, all in connection with arguments that are central to Pinker's case. He tells us, for instance (pp.111-12) that children are born with knowledge of a super rule that if their native language puts the verb before the object, it will use prepositions, but that if it puts objects before verbs, it will use postpositions. He does not reveal that there is a fair-sized minority of languages that do not follow this 'rule'. Another claim Pinker attaches great importance to is that children know 'innately' that we never use regular plurals in compounds such as "rat-eater"; children never say "rats-eater". Italian parents' genes must be unaware of this, since their children grow up saying "fruttivendolo", i.e. "fruits-seller", not "fruit-seller". But perhaps the author's most startling assertion (p.43) is that natural languages do not form questions by flipping the first and last words of a sentence or uttering it in mirror-reversed order. Most European languages, for a start, do precisely these things, as in German: "Sie rauchen" - "Rauchen Sie?" ("You smoke" - "Do you smoke?") Readers can find a development of these and other criticisms of the flaws in Pinker's book in my LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT (1999, Intellect). They will also find there a demonstration of the impossibility of Pinker's 'mentalese', which he believes to be the language of thought.
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