Steven Pinker’s “Language Instinct” Theory (1994) was designed to explain the origins

of human language. He drew his theory from a Chomskyan perspective in which

language was innate and an evolutionary adaptation, incorporating a theory of
“Universal Grammar”, but with a difference of also taking a Darwinian stance a
language, that it was half-instinct and half-art.

By instinct, Pinker believed that language exited across all cultures, and that it wasn’t
just a higher skill such as writing. Evidence for this is the children who live in multi-
culture populations who speak a various mixture of languages (a “pidgin” society) can
create their own conventional grammar and language known as “creole”. Other cited
evidence is that deaf babies are able to use sign language to communicate, in a true
grammatical form. Pinker claims that “infants become equipped” with these skills, for
example, infants who listen to a recording of phonemes were able to tell the subtle
differences between the phonemes.

Pinker also claimed that it would be impossible for children to learn language just
through schooling by their parents and academic education. He had also claimed that
language is not just a “higher intelligence but a specialized mental module”.

Pinker supported Chomsky’s theory of a “Universal Grammar”, which are rules that
govern how human can make an infinite number of sentences with a limited number of
phonemes, due to there being special structures in the human brain which recognizes
the language and grammar patterns of other humans and languages e.g. whether a
language places and adjective before or after a noun.

This comes after Chomsky’s theory which claims that all humans have a “language
acquisition device”, and that only humans have this special adaptation.

Moreover, Pinker criticized an essay written by George Orwell (1984) who discussed the
language of Oldspeak, and how Newspeak would take over in 2050 (new grammatical
rules and language which would render language as we know it today as ineffective).
However, Pinker took the strong stance that although language can be used to convey
thoughts, it does not shape thought, they are not both the same thing. Therefore,
Pinker discards of the claims of Newspeak taking over in 2050 by stating that even if
language becomes so inhibited, everyone has “thoughts”, and that capacity for the
freedom of thought. Thus there exists a “language of thought” in its own right.

Research evidence supporting the notion of language being innate has been done by
Dr. Ann Senghas of the University of Columbina, who had found that although language
is not entirely inherited, humans do have some predispositional factors which allow
them to go on to develop language.
Furthermore, Hause (1996; cited by Pinker A Jackendoff, 2005) had done studies with
primates which revealed that they were resistant to being trained in vocalisations and
that they were also unable to imitate vocalisations. This provides evidence that
language is inherently a special “human module” and ability, which according to Pinker,
became a functional adaptation to allow better communication between humankinds
hunter-gatherer’s ancestors.

However, Pinker’s “Language Instinct” theory has some more opposition. For example,
Tomasello criticized Pinker’s use of the word “instinct” to define language. He claimed
that “scientists and lay persons alike knew that instinct had two criteria” a) it was
behaviorally stereotypical, and b) it would appear in the organism’s ontogeny even if
that organism had not grown up and lived in an environment with the same species.
Therefore, Tomasello claims that language is not an instinct and cannot be described
from an evolutionary perspective.

Furthermore, Samspon (2007) had claimed that “there is no doubt that language is
wholly culturally learned”, therefore also discarding the evolutionary viewpoint of
language as well as considering language as an instinct.

However, Gould (1997) had wrote in his book, “The Pleasures of Pluralism”, that
language is an evolutionary trait, but it was merely more of a “fruitful accident”; Gould
explained that for our human ancestors to be able to adapt to their ever-increasing
challenging environment, their brains had to grow larger. As a result of this, language
became an “evolutionary byproduct”, in which neural connections in the brain which
had had previous functions, now shifted to evolve into new neural connections for new
functions i. e. language.

In conclusion, evidence would suggest that a lot of language is inherited and a very
special acquisition as part of the human race, but there is still a debate as to how for
we can call language innate or instinct. One thing that is clear is that all humans have a
highly intellectual predisposition for language and is an ever-changing phenomena
which will continue to elude researchers for many years to come.