Language, Cognition, and Human Nature collects together for the first time Steven Pinker's most influential scholarly work on language and cognition. Pinker is a highly eminent cognitive scientist, and his research emphasizes the importance of language and its connections to cognition, social relationships, child development, human evolution, and theories of human nature. The thirteen essays in this eclectic collection span Pinker's thirty-year career, ranging over topics such as language acquisitions, visual cognition, the meaning and syntax of verbs, regular and irregular phenomena in language and their implications for the mechanisms of cognition, and the social psychology of direct and indirect speech. Each outlines a major theory - such as evolution, or nature vs. nurture - or takes up an argument with other prominent scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould, Noam Chomsky, or Richard Dawkins. Featuring a new introduction by Pinker that discusses his books and scholarly work, this book represents a major contribution to the field of cognitive science, by one of the field's leading thinkers.

About the Author
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, an eminent cognitive scientist, and the author of many popular books that synthesize large bodies of knowledge of cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and behavioral genetics into a comprehensive picture of how the mind works, how it evolved, and how we ought to bring these ideas to bear on theories of politics and morality. His scholarly work has won many prizes, including the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Dale Prize from the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the George Miller Prize from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the Early Career Award and McCandless Prize from the American Psychological Association. He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and also writes frequently in the popular press, including The New York Times, Prospect, Slate, and The New Republic.

Reviews
The book will be of keen interest to those pursuing cognitive science and the study of development, psychology, psycholinguistics, perception, or linguistics. [...] Higlhy recommended. * G. C. Gamst, Choice, *
This collection brings together Pinker's most significant scholarly work across his considerable thirty-year academic career, representing the first time that the full scope of his work has been compiled within a single volume... Overall, it is highly representational of the core of Pinker's thought and provides a good overview of Pinker's career to date... an interesting and compelling read. * Psychology Learning and Teaching *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199328741
Author Steven Pinker
Format Hardback
Page Count 392
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 165mm * 241mm * 32mm