The Language Instinct PDF

# The Language Instinct ## About the author Steven Pinker studied experimental psychology at McGill University and Harvard University. He is currently Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has studied many aspects of language and visual cogniti...

# The Language Instinct ## About the author Steven Pinker studied experimental psychology at McGill University and Harvard University. He is currently Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has studied many aspects of language and visual cognition, with a focus on language acquisition in children. He is a fellow of several scientific societies and has received research prizes from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Psychological Association. He is the author of *How the Mind Works* and *Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language*. ## How Language Works Journalists say that a dog biting a man is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news. This is the essence of the language instinct: language conveys news. Sentences are not just memory prods: they tell you who in fact did what to whom. Scientists see apparent magic tricks in nature. The principles behind these could be sonar for bats, or a scent trail for salmon. What is behind the ability of Homo sapiens to convey that a man bites a dog? There are two principles: 1. "The arbitrariness of the sign", articulated by Ferdinand de Saussure. The word dog does not look, walk, or woof like a dog, but it means "dog". It does so because every speaker learns this in childhood, linking the sound to the meaning. 2. "Makes infinite use of finite media", articulated by Wilhelm Von Humboldt, which presaged Chomsky. We know that *Dog bites man* is different from *Man bites dog* because of the order that the words are combined. This code, or set of rules, is called generative grammar. Grammar is an example of a "discrete combinatorial system". There are finite discrete elements combined to create larger structures with properties distinct from the elements. For example, the meaning of *Man bites dog* is different from the meanings of the words themselves, or the meaning of the words in reverse order. ## How Language Works The key is that a tree is modular, like telephone jacks. A symbol like "NP" allows one component to snap into any of several positions inside other components. Here are two examples of how this works in practice: 1. In the sentence "The happy boy eats ice cream", the noun phrase (NP) is "the happy boy" and the verb phrase (VP) is "eats ice cream". 2. The sentence "The happy boy's cat eats ice cream" also contains "the happy boy", but this time as the noun phrase within the noun phrase "the happy boy's cat". ## Sentence Structure Phrases are grouped into phrases according to their role-player (argument) and modifier (adjunct). - The head of the phrase dictates its meaning. - **A role-player** is the one taking on the role; it is an inherent part of the phrase´s meaning. - **A modifier** adds information that helps to identify the phrase. For example, in the sentence "The man from Illinois", **"man"** is the head, **"from Illinois"** is a modifier, and **"governor"** is a role-player because being a governor is an inherent part of being a governor of something. ## X-bar Theory A streamlined version of phrase structure is called **X-bar Theory**. This theory simplifies the process of analyzing noun and verb phrases. The key is that a phrase is characterized by its **head**. These properties can be described by a simple set of rules: 1. **Subject-Object-Verb Order:** In English, the head of the phrase is typically first. 2. **X-Bar**: An X-bar can be decomposed into a head word and any number of role-players in either order. 3. **Phrase**: A phrase consists of an optional subject, followed by an X-bar, followed by modifiers in any order. It is worth noting that other languages can have different order rules. For example, in Japanese, the head is often last. ## Deep Structure and Surface Structure The key components of any sentence can be said to be its **Deep Structure** and its **Surface Structure**: * The **Deep Structure** reflects the underlying meaning or intention behind the sentence. * The **Surface Structure** is the actual form of the sentence that we hear. The Deep Structure can be altered or manipulated in order to make the sentence more concise or impactful. This is achieved through **transformation operation**, which moves a phrase from one slot to another. This can be used to create passive or active sentences, questions, or statements. ## Auxiliaries Auxiliaries are words that convey layers of meaning related to the sentence as a whole. For example, *will* conveys that the sentence is about the future. The auxiliary word is the head of the sentence, also known as INFL phrase or *IP*. This makes the head word of the sentence the predicate, which is a statement about the subject. ## Function Words Function words are words that provide grammatical structure, including: - Articles, such as *the, a, and some* - Pronouns, such as *he, she* - Possessive markers, such as *'s* - Prepositions, such as *of, to* - Complements, such as *that, to* - Conjunctions, such as *and, or* These words mark out larger phrases. They are typically the same across all languages. ## Deep Structure Deep Structure refers to the underlying meaning of a sentence, which can be seen as an abstract representation of how the words would be grouped and connected. This structure is often manipulated through **transformation** in order to create the surface structure. ## Surface Structure Surface Structure is the final output of a sentence, which is represented by the words as they appear when we speak or write. It is the result of applying transformations to the deep structure, which can re-order words or modify their roles in the sentence. ## References Pinker, S. (1994). *The language instinct: How the mind creates language*. New York: William Morrow and Company.