University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

Steven Pinker’s book The Language Instinct was my first introduction to the world of language research. It got me hooked. Pinker’s book defines an intellectual agenda that goes far beyond linguistics, which asks what can and cannot be a natural language and how it encodes meaning. Pinker pays attention to how human brains have evolved their language-learning ability. The book dismisses some commonly held beliefs: No, our mind does not “think” using our mother tongue, and we can imagine more than we can express in language. Eskimos do not actually have 40 words for “snow”, and even if they did: So what? Pinker demonstrates how important careful experimentation is in our field, and how computation and quantitative analysis turn linguistics and psychology into empirical sciences. Language is what is actually spoken and used, not what experts prescribe as “good writing” and “good speaking”. This perspective was formative to me when I decided to use large-scale data and develop computational models to study language. To what extent language is indeed an instinct is still debated. Yet, Pinker’s book is a readable, entertaining and stimulating introduction to language science. To me, the author's endeavor to make complex lines of inquiry transparent and fascinating remains an inspiration.