The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) Reprint Edition, Kindle Edition

This is not a review of the book itself, just a warning for anyone thinking of getting the Kindle edition.

The people who published this for Kindle should be ashamed of themselves for selling this product with a straight face.

As Kindle books are often scanned from printed versions, I'v grown accustomed to seeing the occasional mis-scanned word, as they are usually sparse and don't distract from the content.

This book, however, contains hundreds of mis-scans. I'm talking about a few every page (some pages might contain up to 10 errors). And these are errors that routinely distract from the content of the book, as the errors will sometime spell a different word altogether, giving a sentence a completely different meaning that you will only realize is nonsensical after reading an entire paragraph.

Plus, 2 times out of ten, the combination of letters "th" will be scanned as "di". As you must realize, die difficulty of reading dirough paragraphs full of diese errors, in die kindle version of diis book, dioroughly distracts from the enjoyment of die material.

This is a review of the 2010 Kindle edition of the book published by HarperCollins e-books. Without a doubt Pinker has written a five-star book that is both eye-opening and enjoyable. Out of appreciation to the author, I deducted only one star for errors in the Kindle edition. Since Pinker's book was originally published back in 1994, and by a different publisher, it seems conceivable that HarperCollins did not have a digital text and had to resort to scanning with OCR or some kind of not completely successful conversion process. How else to explain errors like those below? (Not a complete list, but what I thought to highlight as I read through.)

• that had seemed passé concern with topics (“that had seemed passé; concern with topics”)
• opiuminduced “(opium-induced”)
• painti (not i on the end, but subscript 1)
• S -> then S (apparently this should be “S -> if S then S”)
• mittengrabben. 1st (“mittengrabben. Ist” [letter i, not number 1])
• put xin the (“put x in the”)
• @@@ (no telling what this should be, but previously it appears as “m” with an acute accent)
• big nourish things (“big nounish things”)
• Astem (surely Pinker wrote “A-stem” or subscripted “stem”)
• Astemaffix (as above)
• fell to thinking, and chunk. (“fell to thinking, and thunk.”)
• out-Sally-Bided Sally Ride (“out-Sally-Rided Sally Ride”)
• VP -> VNP(PP) (“VP -> V NP (PP)”)
• Steven Tinker’s (even the author’s name is not immune)
• King Ethelbuld (“King Ethelbald”)
• a sad and urgent more. (“a sad and urgent note.”)
• A1 Galaburda (“Al Galaburda” [letter L, not number 1])
• and would not into nothing (“and would rot into nothing”)
• something in he world (“something in the world”)
• analyze the verb to broadcasts (“analyze the verb to broadcast as”)
• No one would say give In break (“No one would say give I a break” [with the words after "say" in italics])
• person off gender (“person of gender”)
• trout is a kind offish and (“trout is a kind of fish and”)
• about twelves times as large (“about twelve times as large”)

In a book with many playful and unusual examples of language, one can’t tell, since the e-book can’t be trusted, whether expressions like “isa” or “American Slurvian” are what Pinker intended, or simply more examples of poor editing. On the positive side, the publisher has evidently cleaned up the Kindle version to some extent, judging from the details in someone else’s 2011 review. Given Amazon’s ability to reach into my Kindle and swap files, I am hoping to find a corrected version of Pinker’s book there soon.

Well, not exactly a revision. There is a new “P.S.” section at the end: a little autobiography, how the book was written, some Frequently Asked Questions, Suggested Reading, lots of new references, and “some reflections on the contents of each chapter in the light of developments since 1994.”

The latter is pretty slight. If the typeface were the same size as the text, it would probably cover 15 pages. I can think of three reasons for the shortness:

1. Pinker thinks he was right about most everything in 1994 and doesn’t feel the need to change much.

2. He has updated and elaborated numerous things in two later language books, Words and Rules: The Ingredients Of Language and The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, to which he liberally refers. He notes that the last chapter “Mind Design” begat How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. It is obvious that his most recent, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, had beginnings in chapter 12, “The Language Mavens.”

3. He is a very busy man and did not want to take the time necessary for a thorough update.

I suspect all three are partially true. I was disappointed by how often I asked, "Has no recent research been done on ______ or is Pinker just not writing about it?" Which I suppose is a compliment about how interesting Pinker makes language research. Still, the P.S. definitely adds value. It is worth getting this edition.

Beautiful book. It also serves well with my ambitions of NPL and AI. I believe all Computer scientists should read this book along with linguists as it builds on the logic of the language process and how the mind will work on the techniques of producing language. I kept this structure in the back of my head as I questioned how humans have been communicating with language. Pinker definitely is an entertaining and thorough author.

A thoroughly descriptive and detailed work. It is lengthy, over 20 hrs, but was never boring or too technical to follow with enough interest to continue to the end. I found it to be a worthwhile read.

Lo que más me atrae de las teorías modernas sobre el lenguage es que existe una gramática universal que nace con los bebés ya que a través de la aparicióon del hombresobre la tierra poco a poco se ha hecho parte del DNA de todos los seres humanos por elproceso de selección natural.. Hoy en dia todos los bebés nacen ya con unesquema general de gramática, es decir: sujeto, verbo, complemento directo e indirecto, etc. Es la teoría más fascinante que hoy existe sobre el lenguage humano.