基本説明
ベストセラーとなったＳ・ピンカー『言語を生み出す本能』に敢然と反論。新たな論拠を補い７年振りに改訂。チョムスキー派の言語生得説の誤った前提と論理的破綻を突き、言語知識が文化的学習であることをコーパスから論じる。
With a new foreword by Paul M. Postal. With a new chapter entitled How People Really Speak which uses corpus data to analyse how language is used in spontaneous English conversation, responses to critics, a new structure and extensive revisions throughout.
Full Description
When it was first published in 1997, Geoffrey Sampson's Educating Eve was described as the definitive response to Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct and Noam Chomsky's nativism. In this revised and expanded new edition, Sampson revisits his original arguments in the light of fresh evidence that has emerged since the original publication. Since Chomsky revolutionized the study of language in the 1960s, it has increasingly come to be accepted that language and other knowledge structures are hard-wired in our genes. According to this view, human beings are born with a rich structure of cognition already in place. But people do not realize how thin the evidence for that idea is. The 'Language Instinct' Debate examines the various arguments for instinctive knowledge, and finds that each one rests on false premisses or embodies logical fallacies. The structures of language are shown to be purely cultural creations.
With a new chapter entitled 'How People Really Speak' which uses corpus data to analyse how language is used in spontaneous English conversation, responses to critics, extensive revisions throughout, and a new preface by Paul Postal of New York University, this new edition will be an essential purchase for students, academics, and general readers interested in the debate about the 'language instinct'.
Contents
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
