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.
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“Language is an archeological vehicle ... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.”
—Russell Hoban (b. 1925)