Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind is a groundbreaking study of language's origins as an evolutionary adaptation. How do we 'know' how to speak? In his landmark book Stephen Pinker shows how language is part of our genetic inheritance rather than a cultural creation. From the DNA that builds our brains to the pontification of newspaper columnists, Pinker destroys the myths about language - that children learn to talk by copying their parents, that grammatical standards are in decline, that English defies logic - revealing the innate human instinct to communicate that we are all born with. 'Reading Steven Pinker's book is one of the biggest favours I've ever done my brain ... highly accessible to the general reader yet at the same time seminal for professionals ... exhilaratingly brilliant' Richard Dawkins 'An extremely valuable book, very informative, and very well written' Noam Chomsky 'Brilliant ... Pinker describes every aspect of language, f