The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

These notes are old and were written while reading — they don’t necessarily reflect my current views.

Language is a very complex system, that we learn much faster than seems possible. This leads linguists to believe that humans have an innate instinct for language.

He sees this as a powerful argument against relativism, as there is a human nature. I don’t think that argument holds up tho, as values are not necessarily linked to human nature, and the observation of a human nature has all the flaws all other empirical findings have.