1. Is language an instinct? Justify your answer.

(Question 1)

On his chapter ‘An Instinct to Acquire an Art’, Pinker states the following: ‘(…) I
will try to convince you that every one of these common opinions is wrong! (…)
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the
federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our
brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child
spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without
awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is
distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. (…)
But I prefer to the admittedly quaint term ‘instinct’’. Analyzing each one of his sentences
on the aforementioned quote, it is very clear that for Pinker, himself, language is an
instinct that develops within the human brain – in what he calls the mind’s big bang – in
a certain stage of life and that is oddly enchanting and interesting to those curious to it.
Using words such as ‘spontaneously’, ‘without conscious effort’, and ‘develops
in the child’, we can justify the instinctiveness of the language through the examples of
children while acquiring a language and children developing a previous language within
given society. There is no better one to prove it right than when we observe the creation
a of a new language in a group of kids and how it emerges from simple notions of a
universal grammar interspersed with other features of language which are going to
become the peculiarities of that one themselves. Let’s take the example of a place which
is being colonized: the pidgin language which was formed by colonizers and locals in
order to communicate is completely transformed into another language (creole) if
exposed to children right in the age where they are acquiring their mother tongue. The
universal grammar which we referred to minutes ago is joined by an incredible
grammatical complexity which no one had the work of warning the kids about.
At the top of my mind, to use an EFL/ESL example, which is very common in
classes around the world, we could mention the pace in which children and adults learn
a second language. There is evidence that language acquisition should happen ‘during a
critical window of opportunity during childhood’, which reminds us of how difficult it is
for adults to learn any language in the same pace (rhythmically and successfully
speaking) as children. Maybe because they are more aware of the structure of a
language for they know what lies underneath their mother tongue, while children
instinctively pick up new words and expressions randomly and without the analysis of
each one of them. The examples are infinite (deaf children, the propagation of different
languages around the world, syndromes and diseases which are related to a certain part
of the brain possibly connected to language, etc) – and in an assumption, using these
examples and Pinker’s theory, without the blink of an eye, I can say that, yes, language
is an innate ability to human beings.
2. What is the role of words to Pinker’s theory? (Question 4)

When it comes to talking about words, one of the sentences that called my
attention the most while reading about them on Pinker’s book is the following: ‘A word
is the quintessential symbol.’ According to a dictionary’s definition, quintessential
means ‘representing a perfect or typical example of something’ or ‘it represents the
central nature of something’. When taking Pinker’s quote into consideration, we
assume that the role of words is of vital importance into defining the instinctiveness of
the language.

The explanation to that lies in the fact that words are used naturally by members
of a community or people in general without the concern of its obscurity or lack of sense
to others. Pinker mentions two examples which justify the importance of words into his
theory:

The first one states that when someone hears a word and later on decides to
use it, whoever listens to this person will understand this word perfectly – in the sense
of its use -. At the same time, on a second example, he says that when children hear a
word uttered from their parents, they immediately understand that the word is not a
person’s behavior affecting another person’s behavior and that they can use it in the
way they wish.

Bottom line is words work as a mean of ‘negotiation’ between people without

the intention of setting up characters, personalities or whatsoever. They are what there
are of equivalent to money in linguistics – anyone can convert its meaning to sound and
sound to meaning. By not attentively realizing the purpose of using any of these words,
they happen naturally on people’s speeches and end up of extreme importance when
keeping different meanings and feelings within themselves.

3. “A word in a word is complicated. But then what in the world is a word?” Pinker
states that question on the chapter ‘words, words, words’. What, in your opinion,
would be the proper answer? (Question 7)

In a first look, we are all exposed to the Saussurean version of what a word is:
the thing which is related to a sign and has to be memorized and it makes total sense.
Another very common explanation to what a word is is more related to morphology and
the classes of words – morphemes which act in different ways in a sentence and are
given different names both to be easily identifiable and to execute their roles
syntactically.
However, in my opinion, there are two strings of thoughts we cannot separate
from each other while defining words: one of them concerns the words as units – lonely
pieces of language and their own meanings - which different from being only
memorized, make more sense if identified by context and related to a certain personal
feeling or situation.
 Whenever I think of words, I try to refer to teaching ESL/EFL and the process of
identifying new words and using them. There is an internal analysis which is done by
students to actually refer to those pieces of language as words – they (specially adults),
like Pinker, analyze words as units and products of their morphological rules and
because of that, are able to use them coherently in a sentence (syntax). The same
process happens to children who are learning a language, but in a less aware way –
example which justifies my first opinion as to what words are.
The second thought that comes to mind is actually what Pinker refers to as
‘listemes’ – which graphically is not a word, but has the sense of one when analyzed in
their meanings. Then again, the process of teaching students idioms is the first thing
that strikes me. In this case, even though very persuasively explained by Pinker that
these chunks of language function as words because of the way they are memorized
and understood (nobody will break the words into units, otherwise the sense will be
different), they work in a different way for students of foreign languages for not always
will they mean the same in different languages and not often are they translated with
the meaning of one word only.
Of course there are similarities among them in different languages, but it is hard
to put them into the words to be memorized when at times teachers have to dissect the
expressions to their bottoms because the one meaning is not enough for
comprehension or memorization.
Let’s take the example of teaching the expression ‘caught between two stools’
which means to be found in a very difficult situation. For most students, the listeme
would have to be broken into small parts first because very little of them know the word
‘stool’. On a second analysis, they would have to imagine the situation – what is the
sentence implying when it says you are between two of these things: is it easy? Is it
difficult? Can we get out of it easily? Only after the whole analysis are they able to make
meaning out of it.
Then again, this explanation goes to say that I don’t agree that, just like the
second definition Pinker gives, words (in this sense) refer to rote-memorized chunks.
They are more related to analyzing they own individual meanings and then organizing
them semantically in a mental process of dissecting the listeme.
Based on that, I would say the first definition of what word is which is stated by
Pinker is the one I agree most with.

4. What is the link of the Tower of Babel myth to Pinkerian explanations about language?
(Question 8)

The basic link between the Tower of Babel’s myth (for some reason, even though I’m
not an atheist, I do believe it’s a myth) and the fact that languages are innate lies on the
discussion of the reason why languages vary. Indeed, on a first look, the languages in
the planet if heard without more intrinsic analysis will all sound extremely different, in
examples – given by Pinker – such as: word formation and the use of affixes, word-order,
conjugating of verbs and the behavior of subjects in accordance to them and the
behavior of words.
 But then, using the famous Chomskian example sentence – Martians would say that
Earthlings use a single language – the link (I’m not even sure this is the word to use in
this paragraph, I’d rather use the word ‘relation’) between the myth and the variation
of different languages is broken and with it the fact that every single language differs
from each other enormously.
On that very same note, Pinker describes what Chomsky says about languages – that
they all have the same machinery that underlies them, for that reason, languages
around the world share a common grammatical code, their words have stable meaning,
speech sounds are treated discontinuously and they convey abstract meanings. Because
of that, we can say that, different from the story which has been told by the Bible
throughout the years, languages are the same in a very general way and differ on their
very own peculiarities – and that is what makes them instinctively have a Universal
Grammar.
But what about the variation itself? Pinker uses the Darwinian explanation to justify it.
We can see that on the quote: ‘Differences among languages, like differences among
species, are the effects of three processes acting over long spans of time.’ Here is where
he mentions linguistic innovation and the ability to learn. At the same time, using the
socio-linguistics and the Labovian theory, it gets easier and easier to explain why there
are such differences to language and there is even the possibility of making a connection
between what he says is the reason for variation and the changes in language through
time.

5. How Pinker theory could be applied into an English Classroom (TEFL/TESOL)?

(Question 6)

This is actually a question that could be broken into many different subjects and
thoughts. While reading the book ‘The Language Instinct’ it is very easy to think about
all those theories in terms of language acquisition – in the sense of a first language. It is
actually very interesting to notice how things become clearer and clearer for EFL/ESL
teachers, who have been looking for the explanation to a whole lot of different things,
and finally have an answer for those students, who suspiciously believe you are right
when it comes to one subject or another.
The first (and I truly believe it is going to be one of the most mentioned ones)
subject I would like to mention is the dissected study of exceptions and their given
explanations to terms no one else was able to give throughout the years. I will use adults
to explain this part.
Adults, undoubtedly, are the most skeptical types of students there are for they
need proof that language is somehow logical. Maybe because they have been exposed
to their first language in a very structural way (in the case of Brazilian students of
English), they feel the need to understand the why’s of every single rule – even if they
are exceptions. That is exactly the first point I’d like to take from Pinker’s theory as a
very important classroom application.
When Pinker explains why irregular verbs are the way they are or how plurals
change in some situations and won’t change in other situations according to the original
word or even how words are derived from others and that is how they make sense, all
these explanations are worth a handful of students attention and may even make them
believe that the language is not trying to play a trick on them. I believe that if more
English teachers were exposed to the rules to the exceptions, then maybe, it’d be easier
to make adult students understand certain rules and internalize them more easily than
just have them rote-memorize them.
The second important contribution of Pinker’s theories to the EFL/ESL classroom
lies on the teaching YLE chapter, which is a trend nowadays and is subject to all kinds of
discussion. The use of his theories on the exposing of children to the language and the
innate ability of acquiring whatever it is being said plus their universal grammar
provided by this language machinery would make teachers understand all over the
world that maybe using second language is unnecessary until that window of
opportunity which is present during childhood to acquire language. That is a whole
chapter for discussion for it’d involve methodology, material and teacher training. Not
to mention the whole string of thought parents have of believing teachers still have to
teach using first language, for, once, that was the way they were taught.
Above all, I believe that the great contribution of Pinker’s thoughts is that they
break the belief that people after a certain age cannot learn. If language is innate, it
means I am able to learn it at different stages of life. Notice I’m not saying it is going to
be perfect acquired if you’re an adult and that it will take the same time, but if there is
some machinery behind it all, biologically it makes it possible for everyone to know one
or two languages or whatsoever. It is just a matter of not underestimating the power of
the mind and the ability to learn.