The Language Instinct is a 1994 book by Steven Pinker. Written for a general audience, it argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. It deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar, but dissents from Chomsky's skepticism that evolutionary theory can explain the human language instinct.
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“When a language creates—as it does—a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.”
—Christopher Ricks (b. 1933)