Born For Language

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist, but more importantly a very talented writer. "The Language Instinct" is one of the most interesting and well-written books I have read. It shouldn't be surprising for an author who writes about language to use it so masterfully.

In his book, Pinker attempts to show that the ability of the human species to speak and understand language can be explained with Darwin's powerful idea of natural selection. The experimental evidence suggests that there is a physical area in the human brain that underlies language. This area is responsible for the hard-wiring of the fundamental aspects of language in every human brain. Even though there are countless languages spoken (or signed) today, they all share a universal template of grammar (which resides in the brain) that is subsequently trained by baby experience to receive the form of a modern language.

Pinker brings forth a wealth of examples and experiments to support his ideas that are extremely convincing. For instance, there are diseases or instances of damage to specific areas of the brain (in the left hemisphere) that impair one's ability to speak or understand language. This clearly shows that language has a physical aspect. Pinker then goes to explain how such an aspect could evolve and does a great job at it.
Steven Pinker, and many others with him, probably closed with their research another gap in our knowledge of how the world works. What amazes me all the time is that the explanation is even more wonderful than the mystery itself, and Steven Pinker does well to convey this amazement to the reader.