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1-Page Summary of The Language Instinct

Overview

The Better Angels of Our Nature takes a look at the history of violence in human society, explaining both our motivations to use violence on certain occasions and the factors that increasingly restrain us from using it. Why do you pick up your mother tongue so naturally while trying to learn languages as an adult sometimes feels like banging your head against a wall? And why is it that barring common mix-ups and misunderstandings, we are so adept at communicating with each other almost effortlessly? The answers lie in our nature: language instinct. In these key points, you’ll learn how language is structured and why humans are especially good at picking it up. You’ll also learn about neuroscience behind our amazing linguistic skills.

You will also learn how children intuitively understand grammar even though they haven’t been taught any rules; you’ll discover that there are two wugs and not three by looking at them, and you’ll find out why Siri can be so hard to understand sometimes.

Big Idea #1: We are born with an inherent language ability.

It’s easy to turn thoughts in your head into meaningful sentences. Where did that ability come from? Many people believe we learn grammar in school, but our knowledge of it precedes the moment we are born.

Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar is based on the idea that children are born with an innate understanding of grammar.

According to Chomsky, children don’t learn how to speak from their parents, but rather by using innate grammar skills. Since all languages have the same basic underlying structure as a result of this process, it follows that children understand verb and noun structures despite not having learned them.

For example, you can turn the phrase “a unicorn is in the garden” into a question by moving “is” to the beginning of the sentence. However, for the phrase “a unicorn that is eating a flower is in the garden,” you have to rearrange more than just one word to make it grammatically correct.

No child would ever misapply the first strategy for creating a question to the second, more complex sentence. In subsequent experiments, no children moved the wrong “is” even with sentences they could have never heard before.

Furthermore, deaf children use correct grammar in their signs without ever studying it. Psychologists studied a boy named Simon whose parents only learned sign language when they were adults.

Simon didn’t make the same mistakes, despite only having been exposed to his parents’ style of signing. It’s impossible that he learned this from them since they made so many mistakes. The only way to explain this is that Simon had an innate knowledge of grammar and was able to avoid making their errors.

Big Idea #2: The popular idea that language affects perception is false.

Despite its popularity, there’s no scientific basis for the idea that our language affects how we perceive and understand the world. This idea is called “linguistic relativity” or “Whorfian hypothesis”, after Benjamin Whorf, a linguist who studied Native American languages. He claimed that Native Americans perceived the world differently due to their language structure and vocabulary.

For example, the Apache language does not have a word for “spring” as it is defined in English. Instead, they use words that describe how water moves down from a source, such as “whiteness moving downward.” This indicates that Apaches do not perceive the world in terms of distinct objects or actions. However, other psycholinguists were quick to point out that Whorf never actually studied Apaches in person. In fact, it’s not even clear if he ever met one!