Language is instinct: A new paradigm in linguistics.

摘要

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.