Do words and the rest of our behavior affect each other? A critical response to 'The Language Instinct.'

From: ETC.: A Review of General Semantics | Date: June 22, 1996| Author: Scott, Robert Ian | Copyright information

MIT Professor Steven Pinker claims that humans produce language as the result of some instinct in his book, 'The Language Instinct.' He also says that language has no cause or effect relationship with the rest of human actions. Ironically, because of Pinker's misrepresentation of the relationship between signs and subjects, he contributes little to explaining how humans learn by interpreting such relationships.

In his popular recent book The Language Instinct, the MIT professor Steve...

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