Customer Reviews

Educating Eve: The "Language Instinct" Debate (Open Linguistics)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In "Educating Eve", Geoffrey Sampson rips into the Chomsky-Pinker camp of language theory in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a Philosophy sophomore's dismissal of Christianity. Are Sampson's points valid? Yes. Are they well-presented? Yes. Do they fairly represent his opposition? Well...not exactly (Sampson proves equal to Pinker in the wanton construction of strawmen). Do they provide any substantive alternative besides the less-than-impressive agnosticism? No, in spite of protests to the contrary.

At least that's the story for most of the book. Sensing, perhaps, that his agnostic position is insufficient to generate the reader enthusiasm for which he envies Pinker, Sampson goes out on a limb in his final chapter. In it, the word "incoherent" resonates. While his position here (with respect to human creative ability) is perfectly coherent, his arguments are not. By making clipped reference to all manner of personal and academic material, Sampson fails miserably to make his final point accessible. By the end, even this interested, patient, and sympathetic reader couldn't care less.

Valuable reading, taken with a grain of salt.

I read Pinker's book but it left me uncomfortable with the number of assumptions he stacked, one upon the other, to support the nativist view of language.

Sampson's book was a refreshing "Occam's Razor" and I finished it feeling much more convinced of his side of the argument. It simply doesn't rely as much on assumptions and scientific leger de main.

If you've read The Language Instinct, you owe it to yourself to read Educating Even to see the other side.

'Nativism' holds that we are genetically predisposed to learn language systems with specific properties (nouns, verbs, tenses, tree structure...), and we learn other sorts of languages (e.g., computer languages, mathematical languages) only with great difficulty. 'Empiricism' says the mind is a 'blank slate,' so languages and language acquisition are purely cultural matters. Among the leading nativists (who dominate the discipline of linguistics) are Chomsky, Pinker, Bickerton, and Jackendorff. Sampson's book is dedicated to showing they are wrong.

Sampson is a confident and vigorous writer. He aims a barrage of criticism against nativism, most of which I found less than convincing. Moreover, he offers as an alternative not a linguistic theory, but a general philosophical approach, which he associates with Karl Popper. In my view, philosophy has its place in the world, but the philosophy of science is not an alternative to science. Therefore, Sampson provides no alternative, except that people 'learn by trial and error.' Thanks!

Here are some facts that support nativism: (a) all languages of the world have approximately the same complexity and share strong underlying structural commonalities; (b) children learn their native language very rapidly, and without being taught, whereas they learn other things (e.g., math, science, the arts, natural lore) relatively slowly and almost always with intensive instruction; (c) individuals raised without a native language never learn to speak fluently, later in life, when they encounter language;(d) isolated groups create their own languages (creoles) that are much like existing languages; (e) people with brain damage often lose extremely specific capacities--e.g., to name fruits, or form plurals.

This whole area of study is fraught with ambiguity, because we simply don't know how the brain processes language. Nativists appear to believe there are dedicated, hard-wired modules that efficiently process language, whereas neuroscientists do not find such modules, or believe such modules are the end-product of learning and development, not their starting-point. So there's a lot more to be said on this issue.

I am not a linguist, so I certainly admit that I may be in dire need of an education in this area. But at this point, I stand with the Nativists.

A good long diatribe that rips into linguistic nativism in general, and Pinker in particular. Sampson knows his subject well, but sometimes lets his violent distaste for the ideas he is attacking get the better of him, but his solid scholarship and breadth make this pretty impressive and convincing. It still lacks a serious rebuttal from nativists.

Sampson's attack on Pinker's "The Language Instinct" is, sadly for him, that of an intellectual lightweight criticizing something he doesn't understand.

Pinker has shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, that our language capacity is indeed instinctual. Sampson has shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he doesn't like that fact.

However, saying you don't like something is not the same as proving that it doesn't exist. Sampson does the former well, and falls flat on his face in attempting the latter.

Whether we like it or not, the current evidence is that the world is round and our language capabilities are instinctual. Flat-earthers such as Sampson are entitled to their opinions, I suppose, but I wish they wouldn't burden normal people by putting them in print.

There are other works of fiction that are far more entertaining than this one. Instead of paying money for this book, read it in a library. Then you can laugh all the way to a bookstore to buy something worth having been printed.

Poorly researched, poorly argued, and poorly written, this book does not repay the effort required to read it.