Language is instinct: a new paradigm in linguistics

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Belk, Alan
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University of Guelph
Abstract

If we can identify a science, describe its paradigm, anomalies and research questions, recognize a crisis or impending crisis and a competing paradigm, then a revolution as described by Thomas Kuhn (1970) is taking place. Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language is, according to its Preface, intended to explain the current state of knowledge about language. I examine Pinker's claims and arguments that language is instinctive using Kuhn's ideas as a framework and show that there is a shift to a new paradigm in Linguistics, together with a new set of anomalies and research questions that are engendered by the new paradigm, and thus show that a revolution is occurring.

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Language, Steven Pinker, The language instict: How the mind creates language, Instinctive, Linguistics
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