PINKER the language TINKER!!!

[makaush]

heyall

here's an interesting passage from an excerpt from out of a book written by this famous linguistic sciences reasearcher dude STEVEN PINKER,


HERE---->> http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/u-Ch.13.html

"Language Is a Human Instinct" BUT AINT THIS AN INSTINCT ALMOST ALL LIVIN THINGS SHARE COMMONLY. I MEAN THE HUMAN LINGUISTIC ABILITY IS A PROPOSAL OF THE BROCAS AREA OF THE BRAIN.ANIMALS MAKE SOUNDS TO COMUNICATE , WHICH ARE RELATIVELY INTRAMATRIXIAL AND OF COURSE INTRASPECIES.BUT THEN AGAIN SOME FORM OF SONIC EXUDATION IS OBSERVED!!
LANGUAGE IS A HUMAN INSTINCT IN THIS STAGE OF OUR EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS. ALL LIVING THINGS ARE AT SOME STAGE OF EVOLUTIONARY PROGRESS. WE CHOSE TO EVOLVE MENTALLY AND BREAK AWAY FROM OUR SILLY COUSINS. BUT EVEN THEY ARE NOT NEURALLY EXTINCT! SO ...IS IT MERELY A HUMAN INSTINCT??

HEIL INDRA!

MAKAUSH

[Emma_85]

Drop the caps (you left them on by accident).

But two very prominent people deny this conclusion, and they aren't just any old prominent people, but Stephen Jay Gould, probably the most famous person who has written on evolution, and Noam Chomsky, the most famous person who has written on language. They've suggested that language appeared as a by-product of the laws of growth and form of the human brain, or perhaps as an accidental by-product of selection for something else, and they deny that language is an adaptation. I disagree with both of them.

Well I do agree with those two and not with Steven Pinker. My reasoning is the same as in another thread (the bird feather example). How can anything as complex as language just evolve, if the stages between not speaking and being able to speak don't have an evolutionary advantage?

There's no such thing as a Stone Age language.

I can agree with him here, because as long as the parts of the brain in humans responsible for language do not change, our language won't either.

"Language Is a Human Instinct"

Language is a form of communication, and he does't say anywhere in that article that animals don't communicate (he doesn't even say they don't have languages). The point he's trying to make is something completly different, as he's trying to work out the origin of language. What he's trying to prove ist that our language is an 'instinct'.

[Lex]

Well I do agree with those two and not with Steven Pinker. My reasoning is the same as in another thread (the bird feather example). How can anything as complex as language just evolve, if the stages between not speaking and being able to speak don't have an evolutionary advantage?

Who says they don't? The intermediate stages, such as vocal but non-verbal communication, could very well still have evolutionary value. Primitive verbal communication, even more so. Pinker is not arguing for a saltationist leap from nothing to language as we have it today.

[Keesa]

My theory is much simpler.

[makaush]

My theory is much simpler.

and what would that be miss?

[Keesa]

Creationism.

[annis]

Well I do agree with those two and not with Steven Pinker. My reasoning is the same as in another thread (the bird feather example). How can anything as complex as language just evolve, if the stages between not speaking and being able to speak don't have an evolutionary advantage?

Intermediate stages don't have to be advantageous, they need merely avoid being disadvantageous. I had this repeated at me for several years by a plant pathologist before it sunk in. Also, the genetics of genuinely advantageous adaptations sometimes mingle in curious ways, some good, some bad (schizophrenia might be an example of this) some neither.

[Lex]

Creationism.

Yes, much simpler.... if you take it for granted that God exists. Of course, if you don't do that, then the burden of proving God's existence would make your theory much less simple.

[Episcopus]

Creationism.

Episcopus a "Deo!" quaesivit quare nullas Keesa nunc vel domi vel alio discere?

[EDIT] Fuistine hodie in ludo?

[makaush]

hey all

Steven Pinker, when quoting... " language is a human instinct ", assumed an initiation of an unconscious dialectic of the mind and the brain only prevalent in the human. the mind as an extension of the homogenous brain with the discrete cogency to create intradependant aswell as symbiotic expression arrays called languages. there is not much difference between ancient languages and modern ones except in the department of pronunciation and complex written script. a language becomes a "language" only when there is a comprehensive set of scripting operandi,an organised method of investigation...also called syntax or grammar to understand and to make the future users of a particular language understand the complex architechture of any individual linguistic expression system, which myself... am probably not applying properly in this passage as you may observe, the missing punctuations and paragraph indentations.....any way when i mentioned the fact that pinker quoted language being a basic human instinct...i presumed "instinct" as simply mindborne rather than a biologically augmenting procedure. so this definetely seems to propose that language is a universal life instinct. all living things in the universe are exhibiting some form of "vernacular instinct"....our instinct has developed from a few syllables to what we use today.........

Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo !!! - I'll have a pizza with everything on it !!!

[makaush]

alicia silverstone is my favorite lady

[makaush]

hey emma! .... i do look a little like johnny depp, but... doesnt mean anythin.......

[makaush]

hey all!

this is a very cool lecture by steven pinker titled
words and rules:the ingredients of language, i havent had any access to the book yet. these book shops here dont have a sense of good reading!

here is the link------->> http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/143/

it runs at various datarates and runs for about an hour. watch it!!!!