Reddit reviews The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (P.S.)
We found 24 Reddit comments about The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (P.S.). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Harper Perennial
Have you heard of the Nicaraguan Sign Language? A number of deaf Nicaraguan students, unable to communicate with other hearing-abled people, began to develop a crude sign language when placed in a community together. The younger students further refined the pidgin into complex syntax structures. It's, near as we can tell, the most recent natural birth of a new language.
Also, I suggest reading The Language Instinct. Although some ideas in Pinker's book are debatable, he makes an extremely good case for the instinctual nature of language—that it is a biological cognitive adaptation of humans on the level of dam-building in beavers.
Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct is a strong layperson's introduction to lingistics.
Ohio State has a huge undergraduate linguistics program and publishes an omnibus introductory linguistics textbook to boot. I've heard good things about it: Language Files.
That's one of my favorite popular science books, so it's wonderful to hear you're getting so much out of it. It really is a fascinating topic, and it's sad that so many Christians close themselves off to it solely to protect their religious beliefs (though as you discovered, it's good for those religious beliefs that they do).
As a companion to the book you might enjoy the Stated Clearly series of videos, which break down evolution very simply (and they're made by an ex-Christian whose education about evolution was part of his reason for leaving the religion). You might also like Coyne's blog, though these days it's more about his personal views than it is about evolution (but some searching on the site will bring up interesting things he's written on a whole host of religious topics from Adam and Eve to "ground of being" theology). He does also have another book you might like (Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible), though I only read part of it since I was familiar with much of it from his blog.
> If you guys have any other book recommendations along these lines, I'm all ears!
You should definitely read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, if only because it's a classic (and widely misrepresented/misunderstood). A little farther afield, one of my favorite popular science books of all time is The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, which looks at human language as an evolved ability. Pinker's primary area of academic expertise is child language acquisition, so he's the most in his element in that book.
If you're interested in neuroscience and the brain you could read How the Mind Works (also by Pinker) or The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, both of which are wide-ranging and accessibly written. I'd also recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Evolution gets a lot of attention in ex-Christian circles, but books like these are highly underrated as antidotes to Christian indoctrination -- nothing cures magical thinking about the "soul", consciousness and so on as much as learning how the brain and the mind actually work.
If you're interested in more general/philosophical works that touch on similar themes, Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach made a huge impression on me (years ago). You might also like The Mind's I by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, which is a collection of philosophical essays along with commentaries. Books like these will get you thinking about the true mysteries of life, the universe and everything -- the kind of mysteries that have such sterile and unsatisfying "answers" within Christianity and other mythologies.
Don't worry about the past -- just be happy you're learning about all of this now. You've got plenty of life ahead of you to make up for any lost time. Have fun!
The reason you can't do this is because there is a cutoff point of child language acquisition. Essentially, children acquire language without any real instruction (no one is really sitting their kids down and going over conjugation rules). Around the time of puberty though, this critical period of language acquisition shuts off, and it's at that point that you now have to actively learn a new language through study and practice.
I would suggest taking a look at Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct for a more in depth look at it all.
>increase my likelihood of getting hired abroad
Getting hired doing what? Where abroad?
Why do you want a minor in French? There are at least a few million other Haitians who are bilingual in French, so how are you bringing extra value to the marketplace with that minor? Wouldn't a Spanish/German/Russian/Chinese/etc. - Haitian bilingual be a rarer commodity?
This all really depends on where you want to go and what you want to do.
As for books:
My intro to ling. class used the book Language Files.
The Language Instinct is pretty good.
I really liked The Unfolding of Language.
The Power of Babel doesn't get too technical, but is an introduction to language change.
Beware of the errors, though: see here, here, and here. Fry is not terribly reliable on linguistics. If you want a good introduction to the field for non-specialists, check out Steven Pinker's book.
I would have to strongly caution against both Bill Bryson and Bragg's The Adventure of English. I like Bryson as much as the next guy--he's super easy to read--but PumpkinCrook's on the money with this one. As for Bragg... oof, what can I say? I read it before I had ever taken a Linguistics course and even then it bothered the hell out of me. The style is unscholarly to a fault and it's also mind-numbingly anglocentric (didn't you know that English is the most versatile and resilient language?!). It's fine, I guess, but you could do so much better.
I'd recommend The Origins and Development of the English Language or The Stories of English. The former is more of a textbook; and the latter is daunting in its size, I know, but it's so lovingly done that you can't fault him--with both books, you can more or less hop around according to your fancies.
As for general background, I'd second Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. It's over 15 years old by now and assuredly outdated, but it reads so easily and you learn so much (without devolving into the sloppiness of Bryson or Blagg!) that I must recommend it almost with affection.
>I am specifically looking at writing systems, vis-à-vis Right to left and Left to right and their role in development or impairment of cognitive skills like empathy, humaneness and certain emotional attributes.
There is no evidence for this. However, there is considerable evidence about a more basic difference in languages: the subject verb order. People whose mother tongue has one SVO like Japanese or Chinese, find it very difficult to learn the opposite kind like English. It should be the same for Hindi/English but speaking multiple languages helps overcome the SVO divide. Secondly if Hindi speaking children are exposed to English between ages of 4-6 they will find it easier to learn multiple languages.
The part about symmetrical facial development is crap. Must of the muscles used for speaking are invisible. Whether children smile in their childhood has a much larger impact on their facial structure.
Speakers of one language having accent in another is due to similar phonemes having subtly different sounds. For example the Hindi
र phoneme is very different from the 3 different phonemes represented by the English R, which is again different from the spoken R in French. The Chinese Ri phoneme falls in between
र and ड़. But the speakers typically use the more familiar tongue position making them sound different giving people an accent.
Incidentally in most languages R represents a range of sounds that are in Hindi covered as
य र ल व
If you are actually interested in linguistics, instead of just bakchodi, then try reading Steve Pinker's The Language Instinct
Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?
Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.
Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.
Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):
And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.
> The idea that the mind is in some way non-physical.
The mind is a product and an element of the physical brain. It may not be concretely tangible (i.e., you can't hold a mind), but that does not mean it is not a part of the physical universe. Physics explains the mind quite well, actually. The neurons in our brain are developed in compliance to the laws of physics and biology, the neurochemicals in our brain are physical substances, and the electric currents in our brains that communicate signals between neurons operate in compliance to the laws of physics.
Evolution also provides insight into the development of consciousness. While, sure, humans are the only terrestrial species with advanced enough consciousness to develop religious and philosophical ideas, we know now that many animals have forms of consciousness and proto-consciousness like what we would expect if humans evolved consciousness from simple origins. The mind is perfectly explainable through naturalistic sciences, and our naturalistic model of human consciousness makes predictions that are falsifiable.
I'd suggest reading Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works. Here's a talk he gave on the book. I'd also suggest his The Stuff of Thought, The Language Instinct, and The Blank Slate.
I'd also suggest Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. While it's main thrust is to show how science can inform morality, it offers some pretty decent layperson explanation of consciousness, and it is written by an accomplished neuroscientist (whatever your opinion on his religious works may be). His pamphlet-esque Free Will also covers some good ground here.
> All able-bodied humans are born with the ability to learn language.
Not at all true. You can be able-bodied and learning disabled. There was a nonverbal autistic student at my middle school years ago who ran track. Trivial point, but still incorrect.
> I would argue humans also have a Spiritual Acquisition Device.
I would argue that this argument is SAD. (pun; sorry.)
You're positing a massively complex hypothetical neurological infrastructure to link human brains to a divine alternate universe or dimension that has never been shown to exist. Not only has this neural uplink never been observed, but it is entirely unnecessary, as neuroscientists and psychologists have a perfectly functional, testable model of consciousness without it. You're adding a new element to that model that is functionally redundant and untestable. Occam's Razor would trim away your entire posited element out of extraneousness and convolution.
Such an experiment was done (unintentionally) with deaf children. In absence of an official program, they invented their own sign language.
Noam Chomsky and Universal Grammar suggest all humans are born with grammar built in. The concept of number, noun, action/being verbs, past and future tense, and descriptors are part of all but one known language (and that's a weird culture). This suggests we evolved some communication early on in human evolution.
An interesting book on the topic is The Language Instinct
Recommended these a while back, great, assessable reads.
The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker
http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-Instinct-Mind-Creates/dp/0061336467/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343383543&sr=8-1&keywords=the+language+instinct
Patterns in the Mind by Ray Jackendoff
http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Mind-Language-Human-Nature/dp/0465054625/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383561&sr=1-1&keywords=patterns+in+the+mind
And if you are into etymology, check out
The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson
http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-English-How-That/dp/0380715430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383614&sr=1-1&keywords=the+mother+tongue
The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour Through Mankind's Greatest Invention, by Guy Deutscher
http://www.amazon.com/The-Unfolding-Language-Evolutionary-Invention/dp/0805080120/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343383676&sr=1-2-fkmr0&keywords=guy+deucher+language
Again, all superb books.
I did my master's degree thesis on this when I graduated from university -specifically, my topic was "The evolution of language in homo sapiens". Most of what I posting here is from research papers that I read at the time; but I also read a lot of books on the topic. I highly recommend Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind for information about Kanzi, How Monkeys see the World for information about vervet monkeys, and Steven Pinker's excellent book The Language Instinct for an overview of some of the best science dealing with human language. I basically agree with Pinker's view (and indicentally, the view that ecaward posted a little higher) that primates and some other animals are capable of communicating with symbols; but that the real power of language lies in our ability to recombine symbols through syntax and so alter the meaning, and this escapes primates: it's a uniquely human evolutionary adaptation.
If you're looking for a more academic counter argument, Steven Pinker is a loud advocate for "common use defines language" in linguistics, and he's not exactly radical (he agrees with Chomsky on a lot of things). There's a pop-psychology/lay book with a few chapters that touch on it called The Language Instinct.
It's okay for other people to ID however they will. If it has a negative impact on your access to care and your social transition, it might be a problem, but self determination is very important.
Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" is a very entertaining read. The thesis (language is innate) and style have received the kind of criticism that all science-popularizers get, but it's hard to know how much of that is sour grapes over the book's commercial success.
Is that the same Steven Pinker that wrote The Language Instinct? Just curious; that's the only Steven Pinker book I've read. I don't have anything to add to the discussion on that point. But just looking at the titles of some of his other books, man I need to go find some!
> when given a choice between super amazing paranormal things that cant be proven by science or the much more simple explanation of a massive brain fart you choose paranormal? makes no sense to me.
There's a lot that's been explained and proven by science. But we're always learning, discovering, and explaining new things. Is it impossible to believe that at least some of what has been called "paranormal" actually does have some scientific explanation that no one has discovered yet?
There are many sporadic things in this world that can be difficult to repeat on demand. I sometimes get psychogenic tremors. We (a combination of me, my doctors, family, and friends) have been able to find no exact cause or situation that sets them off. They get worse with stress, but usually only if they've already been occurring recently. My tremors can also occur without any stress at all. There are a number of things that make them worse and a few that make them better, but nothing to really explain why they're happening in the first place. That doesn't mean they actually happen just randomly, just that we can't find a trigger. My first doctor didn't believe I had them at all and told me to stop wasting his time because I couldn't demonstrate the problem, and it didn't happen again when I had access to a camera for months so I couldn't get proof, but it was most definitely a problem.
Ugh, I'm not sure I'm making my point clear. I'm trying to say, there are sporadic things that can't necessarily be done on demand and don't have any clear cause, but which do exist. Some of these, like my tremors, probably have a mundane explanation, while others are classified as "paranormal".
Read "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker. He does an amazing job of explaining how humans learn language. I read it when my daughter was about your son's age and it made me a better parent, appreciate smaller milestones, and really understand how amazing those first years of life are.
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (P.S.) (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061336467/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_L-A6CbG9QS34T
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk - A fashion model gets her jaw shot off in a terrible situation, and so the silent protagonist must reclaim her life. (Highly recommend reading the first chapter in the preview on Amazon. Also highly recommend Haunted by Palahniuk as well.)
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. Wonderful book that delves into the psychology behind language. Incredibly informative while maintaining entertainment.
I have heard good things about The Language Instinct from a friend of mine. But I haven't read it myself though.
This is a great question, but it's so complex and there's so much going on, I'm not sure if it can be sufficiently answered in an ELI5 thread. If you're interesting in the topic of language in general (which, imho is extremely fascinating), I highly recommend The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. It's a very accessible book and, at the very least, would make anyone appreciate how awesome the human's ability to communicate really is.
Cognitive scientist and linguist Steven Pinker actually argues for "I could care less" in his book The Language Instinct and in this related article. His argument is that "I could care less" is sarcastic: You're essentially saying "Well yeah, sure, I guess I could care less, but I really don't care much".
Isaac Asimov wrote quite a few books on physics, some more textbook-y than others.
I was on mobile before and couldn't answer as thoroughly as I'd have liked.
Basically, I take the approach that my kid hasn't read the books and doesn't know how they're "supposed" to act regarding sleep or potty training or anything else. So I read as many books on as many subjects as I can, figuring that there will be something useful from every expert. So for example I read all the big sleep books out there, from Ferber to Pantley to Sears, and I picked and chose what worked for me. I read about attachment parenting AND Babywise. I read Baby-Led Weaning and Super Baby Food. And it's ALL come in handy - my oldest hasn't fit a single mold perfectly, but having all those tools in my toolkit helped me help her (and myself).
For baby development, one of my favorites is [Baby Meets World] (http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Meets-World-Journey-Through/dp/0312591349) because it talks about what happens in the baby's first year but also gives a really good historical overview of different practices like feeding (from wet nursing to pabulum to the current breast/bottle debate), which helps me stop freaking out about the latest trends - basically, it gave me perspective. Touchpoints is another great development book, and The Language Instinct is a fascinating read on how language and cognition develop.
For blogs, I like Ask Moxie's archives.