Linguist Steven Pinker Discusses the Instinct for Language.
Steven Pinker, a psycholinguist at MIT and director of its Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, has a new book on how language works: "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language" (Morrow). He argues that language is not simply a cultural invention taught by parents and schools, but a biological system, --an instinct-- partly learned, and partly innate. To Pinker, a three year old toddler is a "grammatical genius", capable of obeying adult rites of language, similar to web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats. His book also takes on "language mavens" like William Safire and Richard Lederer, accusing them of underestimating the average person's language skills.
Other segments from the episode on March 2, 1994
Exploring the World of People with Autism.
Donna Williams. Her first book "Nobody Nowhere" offered a journey through the mysterious condition of autism; it was an international bestseller. Once her case was properly diagnosed, Williams began therapy which took her out of the "world under glass" and into the real world of speech and emotion. This treatment is the subject of her new book "Somebody, Somewhere: Breaking Free from the World of Autism" (Times Books).
The Pervasiveness of English in Germany.
Rock Critic Ed Ward on encountering the hip new language in Berlin: English.
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