Preface 1. Culture or Biology? 2. The Original Arguments for a Language Instinct 3. How People Really Speak 4. The Debate Renewed 5. The Creative Mind 6. Conclusion Notes Index
Geoffrey Sampson is a former Professor of Natural Language Computing at the School of Informatics, University of Sussex. He is now a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa.
Title mention in Anuario Filosófico, Vol XXXIX/1 2006
"Now we have a much revised, corrected and expanded version which
answers Sampson's many critics and makes ever clearer the fact that
all the Chomsky and Pinker theories are not nearly as well
supported as most psychologists and linguists seem to imagine.
Sampson has a sharp eye for scholarly fudging of facts, illogical
arguments, and towering theories tottering on weak foundations. At
the very least Sampson's no-nonsense book, remarkable for its
lucidity and readability in a field not notable for these virtues,
forces upon us a recognition of the parlous state of a lot of
linguistic argument and compels us to return the Scottish verdict
of "not Proven." We realize that in linguistics the problem is not
so much what we do not know as that much of what we pretend to know
is simply not supported by sufficient evidence. Sampson may not
bring down the temple of a false god but he has most certainly
shaken the pillars. Anyone interested in language and culture will
find the book captivating."- Leonard R. N. Ashley, Geolinguistics,
Vol. 31 2005
"Sampson's book is worth reading, because it provides a view of how
human languages work without appealing to nativist assumptions...I
have recommended Pinker (1994) to my colleagues and students, and
almost all of them have told me that it is one of the best books
that they have read about language. Sampson agrees that Pinker's
book "is superbly well written", but he also says "a book can be
well written, and its conclusions quite wrong" (p. 14). I will now
also recommend Sampson's book to my colleagues and students, and
let them judge between the two."
*Linguist List, The*
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