Description

Contents

1. An Instinct to Acquire an Art 15
2. Chatterboxes 25
3. Mentalese 55
4. How Language Works 83
5. Words, Words, Words 126
6. The Sounds of Silence 158
7. Talking Heads 192
8. The Tower of Babel 231
9. Baby Born Talking—Describes Heaven 262
10. Language Organs and Grammar Genes 297
11. The Big Bang 332
12. The Language Mavens 370
13. Mind Design 404

Glossary 431

Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His research on visual cognition and the
psychology of language has earned prizes from the National Academy of Sciences and the American Psychological
Association. Pinker has also received many awards for his teaching at MIT and for his books How the Mind Works
(which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) and The Language Instinct. He is an elected fellow of several
scientific societies, associate editor of Cognition, and a member of the usage panel of the American Heritage
Dictionary. He has written for The New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Slate, and
Technology Review.