The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

Fascinating insight into how languages work from a man who has studied language all his life. Intriguing premise that language is instinctive in humans, fundamentally different from animal communications and as unique to us as an elephant's trunk is to the elephant. The text gets a bit bogged down in places with repetitive examples, a bit too much detail even for me! But it helps illustrate the points which are all based on research from multiple languages around the globe.

Loved this book. I had never thought about lamguage like this. The topics are presented in a very good way.

This book was recommended to my by a tutor as additional reading around the topic of how we learn language. It is a great introduction to some linguistic theories and in depth enough to really get to grip on some of the theory.As the title suggests, the book argues that we have a "language instinct." comparable to the instinct that birds have to navigate and spiders spin webs. It doesn't suggest that no linguistic input is required, rather that we are hard wired to respond to and decipher this input, or in the absence of adequately complex language. It is the sort of book that you can read for pleasure and chat about too.

Very thought provoking. New insights into language. Excellent.

The condition of the book was excellent. I am very impressed with how fast I recived the item as well. However, the book didn't look the same as the image on this website but that is a minor issues considering how brilliant the condition is and how fast I recieved it. I would reccomend this book for anyone who is looking to go to university and study Psychology or linguistics. This is also on the suggested reading list for Oxford University in the UK.

The book is in good condition. My only remark is that someone has highlighted sentences in yellow pen, but otherwise I'm happy with the purchase.

For some reason this book was very difficult to find. As the seller I would recommend speaking to Amazon. When searching only used copies came up etc Perseverence brought a result eventually.Arrived perfectly in time with prime. Thank you

I first read this book ten years ago when I started teaching English in various parts of the world. I thought it a wonder. We are hard-wired for grammar; it must be true. My students in Europe, Asia and the Middle-East begged to differ.Now I'm studying for an MA in Linguistics and I beg to differ too.Still, I think you should read this book; it's a fine piece of propaganda. Then read Jean Aitchison's 'The Articulate Mammal'; Reith lecturer, Oxford prof and so forth. Not so cool . . . but right.