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The Language Instinct

How the Mind Creates Language

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The Language Instinct

Written by: Steven Pinker
Narrated by: Arthur Morey
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About this listen

In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution.

The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

©2011 Steven Pinker (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc. Communication & Social Skills Linguistics Personal Development Science Social Sciences Mathematics Witty Human Brain Computer Science

What the critics say

"Pinker writes with acid verve." ( Atlantic Monthly)
"An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written." (Noam Chomsky)
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If you're serious about reading this book, and you're certain you want to listen to it instead of read it, I highly recommend a pen, notebook, descriptive page on Markov Chains, and an iron will. I might be dumb, but this book is just plain hard to keep up with, especially when many complex ideas are vomitted at you one after another without you ever having a chance at visualizing and/or digesting them. God forbid you try to multitask with this book, or set it as your morning alarm. The chapter on the biology of speech nearly killed me.

Fantastic! ...but not as an audiobook.

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This is a fantastic book, greatly informative and insightful. Some of the explanations can be a bit long winded but it's worth it.

Great book

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This is an earlier work form pinker and he gets into some esoteric things without that same level of wit and interesting components. Still tremendous as always from him.

Classic Pinker but not his best

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