This book makes easier reading than “The Stuff of Thought”, but it’s also less informative. There are many speculations, but not enough evidence. Pinker doesn’t demonstrate exactly “how the mind creates language”, which is what the subtitle suggests and what I’m mainly interested in, but instead he expounds the theory of “Universal Grammar”, which was initially developed by Noam Chomsky. In a nutshell, the argument is that there are so […]
Read moreTag: Steven Pinker
“The Stuff of Thought” by Steven Pinker
Informative Professor Pinker introduced the readers to some of the major constructs used in the English language, such as content-locatives, container-locatives, double-object datives, prepositional-datives, causatives and intransitives. He also gave an overview of various linguistic theories, such as Extreme Nativism, Radical Pragmatism and Linguistic Determinism. I find it very informative and interesting, especially the ingenious experiments conducted to test the theories and explore the cognitive capabilities of babies, monkeys and […]
Read more