The Language Instinct
How the Mind Creates Language
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
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By:
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Steven Pinker
About this listen
In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution.
The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.
©2011 Steven Pinker (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson - the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent - brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience, and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't) to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.
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More satire than history
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 12-18-15
By: Bill Bryson
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Mind in Motion
- How Action Shapes Thought
- By: Barbara Tversky
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas.
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Physically difficult to listen to
- By Claire Hay on 11-08-19
By: Barbara Tversky
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The Art of Language Invention
- From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building
- By: David J. Peterson
- Narrated by: David J. Peterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
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From master language creator David J. Peterson comes a creative guide to language construction for sci-fi and fantasy fans, writers, game creators, and language lovers. Peterson offers a captivating overview of language creation, covering its history from Tolkien's creations and Klingon to today's thriving global community of conlangers.
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Great resource, but not conducive to audiobook
- By Ashley T. on 04-18-16
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The Blind Watchmaker
- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
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The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
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Challenging textbook more than an enjoyable listen
- By Eric on 01-15-12
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Ravenous Brain
- How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
- By: Daniel Bor
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
By: Daniel Bor
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
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Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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Humour and understandability.
- By Chris B on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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Memory Craft
- Improve Your Memory with the Most Powerful Methods in History
- By: Lynne Kelly
- Narrated by: Nancy Linari
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
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Groundbreaking anthropologist and memory champion Lynne Kelly reveals how we can use ancient and traditional mnemonic methods to enhance and expand our memory.
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So grateful this is on Audible!
- By happy_reader on 02-19-22
By: Lynne Kelly
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The Cosmic Serpent
- DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
- By: Jeremy Narby
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences", leads the listener through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge. In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.
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Very Good Religious Text
- By Blair K. Hartman on 08-09-17
By: Jeremy Narby
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Brain Rules (Updated and Expanded)
- 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
- By: John Medina
- Narrated by: John Medina
- Length: 8 hrs
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In the New York Times bestseller Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives. Medina’s fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into brain science.
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Dear Publishers . . .
- By Bekah on 04-06-17
By: John Medina
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Almost everything about puberty has changed since today's adults went through it. Bewildered adults have begged for reliable and relatable information about the modern adolescent experience. This Is So Awkward answers their call. Written by a pediatrician and a puberty educator—together the hosts of a lively and popular podcast on puberty, and moms to six teens between them—this is the handbook everyone has been searching for. Eye-opening and reassuring, This Is So Awkward will help adults understand the turbulent pubescent decade and become confident guides for today’s kids.
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You make hundreds of decisions every day, from what to eat for breakfast to how you should invest, and not one of them could be made without the essential component of emotion. It has long been held that thinking and feeling are separate and opposing forces in our behavior. But as Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of Subliminal, tells us, extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience have proven that emotions are as critical to our well-being as is rational thinking.
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Widely misleading
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What listeners say about The Language Instinct
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Shorttyler
- 03-26-24
More about linguists than I expected
Not a book that should've been translated to audio format in my opinion. I got through half of the book before I couldn't handle what felt like a linguistics class to me. It also went on for a surprising amount of time about how bad AI is which outdated it quite a bit. I knew I didn't agree with all of Pinker's ideas but I was looking forward to hearing them. Didn't feel like I heard any of them though, just a laundry list of fricatives, phonemes, and phonetics.
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5 people found this helpful
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- NB15
- 02-26-19
Exceptional Book
Has great overlap of Linguistics and Psychology, and a very broad yet detailed look at the world through the lens of language.
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- Archie R. Whitehill
- 10-06-20
A must read
This book is an interesting primer on linguistics. At times the material is difficult, but a "reread" will help clarify some of the more difficult passages. This is not only an overview of how we use language, but a glimpse into how our minds work. If you are at all interested in the mechanics and the development of language from infancy into adulthood, this is definitely a book for you to read.
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- Amie
- 01-11-13
Irritating recording distracts from the content
I'm not sure if the fault lay with the recording or the narrator, but in any case the audio is very sibilant. The slurred or hissed S's distract from the content, and sometimes have even caused me to go back and relisten to a word in order to make it out.
Nonetheless, the content is interesting.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Rachel
- 11-29-12
Good book, feels a bit dated, but features updates
I enjoyed this book, though some of the pieces of information or anecdotes weren't new to me. I liked how the author clearly laid out his arguments, though I didn't always need 15 examples of the phrase or concept he was explaining. The book was a pleasant listen and I was pleased that it was broader than a basic discussion of language. The author allowed himself to spend time explaining related concepts and instincts to put the language stuff in perspective.
My main concern with the book was that it was a bit dated in places, including one reference that was just ridiculous from a 2012 perspective (but not central to the story Pinker was trying to tell). The book was first written in 94, I think, but was updated more recently. The end of book addresses those dated items. It was nice to hear a short update on some of the affected topics, though it sounds like Pinker's general theories did not change. The dated bits were mostly just pop culture references, I think the science (or theory) holds up.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ariel
- 06-30-16
Great content, but terrible in audio format
This is a great book that I would strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in not only language but science and human nature. But I WOULD NOT recommend listening to it in audio format. It's extremely hard to follow and I almost gave up several times. I'm overall quite happy with Audible, but listening to this book proved to me not only the obvious truth that not all books can be adapted to audiobook format, but that the judgement of whether a book can be adapted or not can be quite subjective. My answer to this question regarding this book is a clear NO, but I'm happy I finished it and I now actually really want to buy the paper version.
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- nick
- 11-09-21
Arcane
Very nich and subspecialized. I just let the audio ran and pick up what I can.
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- Michael K
- 04-23-19
Doesn’t hold up 25 years later
Pinker is very dismissive of views that don’t conform to his own. In a recently added afterward he frequently blames other people for misunderstanding his writing. This is an ironic claim for a language expert. The performance is adequate but the book contains many diagrams that are missed by the listener.
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3 people found this helpful
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- JD
- 06-07-18
Fascinating
The content is fascinating, however some times hard to follow in audiobook format. The printed book contains diagrams which help clarify points difficult to grasp by just listening.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- G. Pike
- 12-17-16
Excellent book!
This book should be essential reading for writers of fiction and creators of constructed languages.
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