The Language Instinct
Steven Pinker
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Chapter 4
- Journalists say that when a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news. This is the essence of the language instinct: language conveys news. The streams of words called "sentences" are not just memory prods, reminding you of man and man's best friend and letting you fill in the rest; they tell you who in fact did what to whom. Thus we get more from most stretches of language than Woody Allen got from War and Peace, which he read in two hours after taking speed-reading lessons: "It was about some Russians." Language allows us to know how octopuses make love and how to remove cherry stains and why Tad was heartbroken, and whether the Red Sox will win the World Series without a good relief pitcher and how to build an atom bomb in your basement and how Catherine the Great died, among other things. #7365 •