Language 101: Exploring Steven Pinker's Insights on Language and Mind

This report analyzes Steven Pinker's perspective on language, focusing on his insights from the video and his books. It explores two key aspects: the language instinct, which Pinker, like Noam Chomsky, views as an innate ability in children to learn and generate new sentences, and the significance of verbs in sentence construction and conveying meaning. The report highlights how verbs serve as the framework for sentences, providing slots for other elements and contributing to the overall coherence and understanding of communication. The report examines how Pinker connects language to the inner workings of the human mind, emphasizing the unique human capacity for language and its importance in understanding cognitive processes. The report references a video and provides an understanding of Pinker's ideas.

Running head: LANGUAGE 101
Introduction to Language
-Steven Pinker on Language
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1LANGUAGE 101
In the given video, Steven Pinker discusses about how language and its usage
provides us a window to understand human nature. According to him, understanding how the
mind works or developing an understanding of the human nature is a complicated task since
the workings of the mind is not visible and cannot be quantified. However, language is an
aspect that has a framework and is quantifiable, and developing an understanding on how
humans use and understand language provides us an insight into the inner working of the
mind. In this video, Steven Pinker provides a combined insight into the ideas he discussed in
his books “The Language Instinct” and “How Mind Works” (youtube.com).
After watching the video, two very important aspects captured my attention. The first
aspect is about the aspect is regarding the language instinct, or the innate structure of the
mind that helps children to learn a new language, and the second aspect is regarding the
importance of verb in language and how it helps to convey important information while
communicating (youtube.com).
The instinct of language was a theory first proposed by the famous linguist Noam
Chomsky. Steven Pinker is a strong proponent of this idea, and supports the fact that children
has an inner mental algorithm that develops as the child matures, and this algorithm allows
children to experiment with words, using mind as a computational system to generate new
sentences using their repertoire of known words, through the process of recombination as
well as trial and error. They often end up creating sentences that might have no meaning, but
shows their ability to create new sentences, which they might have not even heard of.
According to Pinker, this ability also shows the creativity of the children, an attribute of their
‘language instinct’.
The other aspect was in the significance of verbs in the language, its construction and
conveyance of meaning and information. According to Steven Pinker, the verbs functions as

2LANGUAGE 101
a chassis of language. This implies that the verbs helps in the development of framework
around which the sentence can be constructed to give it a proper meaning, so that it can be
understood by others, thus addressing the need of communication of thoughts or ideas. As
Pinker puts it across, the verbs provides slots for other parts of the sentences, such as the
subject, the object, the preposition and adjectives helping in the development of a coherent or
meaningful sentences. Also, understanding the verbs can help to understand the meaning of
the sentences as well as understanding the meaning and implication of the verbs in itself
(such as filling, pouring or loading, each have slightly different implications. It shows that
verbs help to understand the meaning of the actions as well as the means and the end of the
action themselves (youtube.com).
Understanding of these two aspects have helped me to appreciate how language is a
unique human phenomenon that is contributed by both an innate ability humans possess since
childhood to learn and communicate in a specific language as well as how the framework is
important for the construction of a meaningful sentence.

3LANGUAGE 101
References:
youtube.com. "Steven Pinker On Language". Youtube, 2012,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_kOzdRqC24. Accessed 19 Sept 2018.