“Language as an instinct” (1994) is a book written by Steven Pinker for a wide range of readers. In it, the author puts forward the idea that the ability to language is inherent in a person from birth. He relies on the idea of Noam Chomsky that the common grammatical principles underlie all human languages. In the final part of the book, Pinker explains the phenomenon of human language as an instinct , moving away from Chomsky’s skeptical belief that evolutionary theory can explain language ability.
Content
General Provisions
Pinker refutes some common judgments about the language: the need to teach children the native language, the scarcity of the grammatical knowledge of most people, the constant decline in the quality of the language, the significant influence of the language on the way of thinking, that animals can be taught the language. The author claims that all these views are erroneous. He proposes to consider language as an exceptional ability of people, which arose in the course of evolution to solve specific communication problems in primitive societies of hunters and gatherers. The language is comparable to other adaptation variants of living beings - spiders weave webs, beavers build dams, also obeying instinct.
Defining language as an instinct, Pinker believes that metalworking and even writing are not human invention either. Any human culture has its own language, but only a few have access to technology. As evidence of the universal nature of the language, Pinker considers the spontaneous assimilation of grammatical rules by children even in a mixed cultural environment where there is no formal grammar. Deaf children express with their hands what they hear through voice, and independently invent sign language with correct grammar, which is broader than the primitive “I am Tarzan, you are Jane”. Language (speech) also develops in the absence of formal rules or parents correcting children's grammatical errors. These facts confirm that language is an innate ability, not an invention of man. Pinker also shares language and the ability to reason, emphasizing that this is not just a feature of the developed mind, but a kind of "mental module." He singles out the linguistic concept of grammar as dependencies of language elements and formalized rules, such as the grammatical rules of American English. The author argues that if the rules like “The English sentence cannot begin with a preposition” require additional explanations, they do not meet the needs of live communication, therefore they should be discarded. Instead of a standard grammar, he proposes recommendatory rules that increase clarity of presentation.
Pinker tries to trace the essence of language as an instinct, referring to his own research into the process of language learning by children, to the works of other linguists and psychologists, as well as relying on numerous examples from the field of culture. For example, he notes that some brain damage leads to specific speech disorders - Broca 's aphasia, Wernicke's aphasia - when it is difficult to understand certain grammatical structures. In this case, in childhood, a person has a critical period for the development of speech, just as there is a critical period for the development of vision in kittens. Many of the provisions of the book are based on Chomsky's theory of universal grammar , the principles of which are characteristic of all human languages. Pinker explains that the universal grammar is based on the ability of some structures of the human brain to recognize the general laws of speech of other people: whether the language is defined before or after the word being defined and others. This conditions the process of rapid mastering of a language for which there is no explanation from the standpoint of logic. This ability to learn exists only at a certain childhood age, then it is lost, freeing up brain resources due to its high energy intensity.
Development of Pinker's ideas on the instinctiveness of language
In the book Atoms of Language, Mark Baker , developing the Pinker hypothesis, sets up a mental experiment on the biological competitiveness of individuals with three different gene variants: with congenital and predetermined grammatical parameters (homo rigidus), with no congenital grammatical parameters (homo whatus) and with congenital but not “pre-set” parameters, that is, with the possibility of choosing one of the opposite options for each parameter (homo parametrus). Baker comes to the conclusion that the first of the three hypothetical genes considered biologically prospective and competitive. [1]
Notes
- ↑ Baker M. Atoms of language. Grammar in the dark field of consciousness. Per. from English M .: Publishing House LKI, 2008. - 272 p.