The 'Language Instinct' Debate, Revised Edition

The 'Language Instinct' Debate, Revised Edition
by Geoffrey Sampson
July 1, 2005, Continuum International Publishing Group　ISBN:0826473857

Table of Contents
Foreword (Paul M. Postal)
Preface
1. Culture or Biology?
2. The Original Arguments for a Language Instinct
3. How People Really Speak
4. The Debate Renewed
5. The Creative Mind
6. Conclusion
Notes
Index

以下、http://www.grsampson.net/BLID.html より引用。

Over the last forty years, it has become fashionable to believe that human beings are born with detailed knowledge "hard wired" in their genes.

In particular, children are said to be quick at language-learning because they inherit a special language instinct which gives them most of what they need to know before they start. This idea was first argued by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s and 1970s; it has been popularized by Steven Pinker's best-seller The Language Instinct.

The 'Language Instinct' Debate is a critique of this idea. It is an enlarged and revised edition of a book first published in Britain under the title Educating Eve.

It assesses the many arguments used to justify the language-instinct claim, and shows that every one of them is wrong. Either the logic is fallacious, or the factual data are incorrect (or, sometimes, both). The evidence points the other way. Children are good at learning languages, because people are good at learning anything that life throws at us ― not because we have fixed structures of knowledge built-in.

A new chapter in this edition analyses a database of English as actually used by a cross-section of the population in everyday conversation. The patterns of real-life usage contradict claims made by believers in a "language instinct".

The new edition includes many further changes and additions, responding to critics and taking account of recent research. It has a preface by Paul M. Postal of New York University.

The 'Language Instinct' Debate ends by posing the question "How could such poor arguments have passed muster for so long?"

【関連書籍】
『言語を生みだす本能（上・下）』スティーブン・ピンカー著、NHKブックス、1995　ASIN:4140017406
The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker, William Morrow & Co, 1994（PBK: Perennial Classics, 2000）ASIN:0060976519