Pinker Inkshed
Pinker asserts that language is an instinct, that a universal grammar exists that children visibly express without formal instruction in language; that they have the ability to learn all or any language but they happen to adapt to the language their parents speak, those being the portions of the universal grammar that move forward. He goes back to Darwin’s concepts of language to paint it as a natural phenomenon, an instinct developed overtime not unlike songbird’s learning songs to sing or a bat and it’s Doppler effect. He is right, one can just observe how one speaks or uses language to realize it is more instinctual rather than a carefully crafted skill. Just in a simple spoken sentence, hundreds of things are occurring; Yet we usually speak without comprehending everything we are doing with that simple sentence. This whole concept as of now undisputed fact that not one civilization or tribe in the world were found living as mutes help attest to the biological nature of human language. Pinker provides a passage from Michael Leahy’s diary in when he talks about the natives were jabbering weird barbaric sounds but it was actually a comprehensible form of communication…a language even. You see this in sci fi and fantasy films, whether they be Orcs in Lord of the Rings speaking in grunts which allow for coordination for attack or alien’s who speak in sonic beam sounds to rely in a higher realm of psychology their own language…language doesn’t even have to be aural based either, but still the means for communication exist between human beings.
