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The Language Instinct (HarperPerennial, 1995; first published 1994)

Steven Pinker · c. 1994

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Steven Pinker did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this book, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The book prints chapter headings its extracted text does not preserve, so the claims below are in the book's order but not grouped. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works.
  2. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture.
  3. Knowing a language, then, is knowing how to translate mentalese into strings of words and vice versa.

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