The Language Instinct is a 1994 book by Steven Pinker. Written for a general audience, it argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. It deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar, but dissents from Chomsky's skepticism that evolutionary theory can explain the human language instinct.
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“The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)