Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating, but certainly not "light reading"
Review: This book was instructive, well written, fascinating, and mostly comprehensible. I say "mostly" comprehensible because the detail required to discuss something as complex as language means that the reader is asked to remember and understand all those school terms from writing class that most of us quickly forget - case, nominative, accusative, prepositions, phonemes, indirect objects, participles, auxiliaries, articles, determiners, intransitives, and the like. Fortunately, Pinker is lucid and practical, providing a glossary (which is needed for repeated referral while slogging through some parts of the book) and plenty of down to earth examples to demonstrate his points. He makes a strong case for humans having a language instinct, and does so in a very engaging fashion. I found the book entertaining and full of fun, a genial approach for the thoughtful ruminations about the fascinating reality of language. I wasn't convinced by his arguments in chapter 11 on 'The Big Bang', but the rest of the book won me over. This book requires concentration to read and determination to finish, but is well worth the effort to do both.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating stuff, and a fun read!
Review: If you've come this far, I reckon you already know something about _The Language Instinct_. Either that, or you're a linguist, in which case you might want to just skip ahead to the next reveiw. In any event, I'm not going to waste time telling you what this book is about - you probably already know. It's hard to imagine anything more boring than a book about linguistics, except possibly a book about linguistics written by an MIT professor. A friend had to literally stick this book in my face to get me to read it. And I'm mighty glad he did!
From the start, the Pinker makes it clear that he's speaking to a non-technical audience, but he does it without condescension or dumbing down the subject matter. His wonderful use of examples and wit help to cement the ideas. And the depth of the concepts he discusses leaves the reader pondering these matters well after the book's back on the shelf.
My copy sits on my desk at work as a reference. I've lent it to more people than any other book I own, save _Bored of the Rings_. And best of all, when your friends see you reading this they think you're an intellectual!
- Bill Thacker
Rating:
Summary: I only wish the book was here when I studied linguistics.
Review: A very thorough and thought provoking book. As a former linguistics student, I can honestly say that it would have been very useful to me when I studied linguistics at the Univ. of Alberta in Canada. Pinker can clarify complex subjects like few other people. Congrats Prof. Pinker for a well written and useful book.
Rating:
Summary: Interested in science? You *must* read this book.
Review: If you like lucid, entertaining, highly informative books on science, written by the scientists themselves, you must read this book. This is one of those books that makes me want to raid its bibliography, to learn so much more in greater detail. Not that Pinker doesn't provide detail. It's just that the subjects are so fascinating, and he surveys so many of them. I all of a sudden want to know more about aphasics, sign languages, hominid evolution, Chomskyan grammars, child development, "creole" languages, patients with Williams syndrome, evolutionary psychology, bonobos, and, believe it or not, the evolution of elephants. I am also eager to find rebuttals to his primary thesis--that language is an instinct of humans--precisely because he makes such a convincing case. A book that both William F. Buckley and Noam Chomsky can praise has got to be exceptional.
Rating:
Summary: Everything I wanted to know about language...
Review: Everything I wanted to know about language seems to be in this book. Pinker's book is so fascinating and entertaining that I, an ambitious amateur in liguistics, wish to dig deeper into the topics mentioned. This book is the most interesting non-fiction title I have ever encountered; thus the 10 rating.
Rating: 
Summary: Sparkling with wit, the way science should be presented.
Review: Pinker has a compelling argument to make, and he makes it well. Mixing wit and anecdote with controlled experiments, Pinker writes with a clear and enjoyable voice, while never losing sight of the science.
He starts with Chomsky, but this is not a rehash of old news. In fact, Pinker takes the ball and runs with it, giving Chomsky moral Darwinian support just where he needs it.
Aside from a perplexing respect for Barbra Streisand, his conclusions are logical and precise.
This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to know more about the world in which we live, and and a good read as well.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for anyone interested in how we learn language.
Review: I have always been interested in how we learn a language and why it is so much easier when we are very young. Pinker uses many detailed examples to explain just how this happens. I found it particularly fascinating to read of many examples where very young children learned a language on their own - one that they perhaps did not even hear in their environment. I found it equally fascinating to discover that American Sign Language (ASL), the primary language of the deaf in America, has a grammar that is equally as rich as those of spoken languages - and that the signing that psychologists taught to Chimpanzees was extremely crude and without such grammar. It was amazing to find that deaf children will even learn some sort of a sign language on their own. Although I skimmed much of the technical diagramming of phrase structures and sentence structures, I found this book extremely interesting and very thought provoking.
Rating:
Summary: A thought provoking and important book
Review: The scope of this book is one which is close to everybody's heart -- how we can communicate.
It represents a completely refreshing and extremely informative and comprehensive exploration of how it is that humans can speak, and speak so well. Remember the one about how Eskimos have 40 words for snow? It turns out to be junk! I for one was was of the many millions who believed this without question.
Pinker manages to debunk many similar `urban myths' -- a very refreshing `reality check'.
Pinker's main message is very simple, and yet very powerful. The human mind is not composed of a blank slate upon which language, skills and wisdom are written. Nor are we general purpose computers waiting for the right program to be downloaded. Instead, humans come into the world with a large proportion of these already pre-wired. What we have in our brain is a finite collection of precursor programs that enable us to learn language and enable us to make use of the world we are in.
This is in a way not news to most parents who can observe that their children have innate differences that environment could not have determined.
But it is definitely news to many Social Scientists, Educationalists, and people Pinker refers to as `language mavens' (language pundits).
However, I think the largest long-term implications will relate to how humans come to terms with the world, its plants and animals and with other peoples. An important book, which is also very well written. I could hardly put it down!
Rating:
Summary: I disagree with one reviewer (taking time for one)
Review: The reader, for example from Glasgow Kentucky claims that Pinker's book is a populist account rather than the writing of a professional linguist? Yes, there is debate as to innateness in language, and yes there are professionals on both sides of the debate. To claim that Pinker isn't a professional linguist belies a rather superficial reading of the book, as well as the book's jacket, clearly denoting Pinker's professional qualifications on the knowledge. As for the "contractions violating universal grammar" in BVE, may I suggest a rereading of the chapter...that's not what he claimed. But, I do side with the reviewer that I've cited, that they should read Educating Eve, to get both sides of the story, but please be careful to get "both sides" correct...
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, but certainly not "light reading"
Review: This book was instructive, well written, fascinating, and mostly comprehensible. I say "mostly" comprehensible because the detail required to discuss something as complex as language means that the reader is asked to remember and understand all those school terms from writing class that most of us quickly forget - case, nominative, accusative, prepositions, phonemes, indirect objects, participles, auxiliaries, articles, determiners, intransitives, and the like. Fortunately, Pinker is lucid and practical, providing a glossary (which is needed for repeated referral while slogging through some parts of the book) and plenty of down to earth examples to demonstrate his points. He makes a strong case for humans having a language instinct, and does so in a very engaging fashion. I found the book entertaining and full of fun, a genial approach for the thoughtful ruminations about the fascinating reality of language. I wasn't convinced by his arguments in chapter 11 on 'The Big Bang', but the rest of the book won me over. This book requires concentration to read and determination to finish, but is well worth the effort to do both.
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