''The Language Myth'' is a 2014 book by

Vyvyan Evans Vyvyan Evans (born ) is a British cognitive linguist, digital communication technologist, popular science author, science fiction author and public intellectual. He has published fifteen books, both non-fiction and fiction. He holds a Ph.D. in L ...

, written for a general audience. It is a direct rebuttal of

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ...

’s 1994 book ''

The Language Instinct ''The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language'' is a 1994 book by Steven Pinker, written for a general audience. Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. He deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim t ...

''. Evans argues against

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

’s claim that all human languages provide evidence for an underlying

Universal Grammar Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible h ...

. Evans posits, instead, a language-as-use thesis to account for the nature of language, how it is learned and how it evolves.

Reception

''The Language Myth'' caused considerable controversy upon publication among supporters of Chomskyan Universal Grammar.

David Adger David Adger, (born 23 September 1967) is a Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Adger is interested in the human capacity for syntax. Adger served as president of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 2015 ...

argued that the "attack on generative linguistics misrepresents the field". Another vocal critic,

Norbert Hornstein Norbert Hornstein is professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Maryland. Working within a generative framework, he has worked on the nature of logical form, and has recently proposed that control should, like raising, be analyzed in ...

attacked the book for presenting caricatures of Chomskyan generative grammar and of providing inadequate arguments to support its main claims. Others have attacked the book for its polemical style and what are claimed to be Evans' misunderstandings of Universal Grammar. Evans responded by claiming that it is exactly critics of the book who misunderstand. He argues that his critics do not provide a coherent argument that is falsifiable as they posit Universal Grammar as a theoretical axiom, which does not require proof or evidence to support it. He also argues that the Universal Grammar perspectives makes a claim that is biological rather than linguistic in nature, and hence one that cannot be substantiated on the basis of linguistic evidence.

Controversy

In 2016, ''Language'', the flagship academic journal of the

Linguistic Society of America The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) is a learned society for the field of linguistics. Founded in New York City in 1924, the LSA works to promote the scientific study of language. The society publishes three scholarly journals: ''Language'', ...

published a series of "Alternative (Re)views" by six leading linguists, all addressing ''The Language Myth''. Evans was originally invited to contribute a response to those articles. However, his submission was rejected by the journal's review editor. Evans wrote an open-letter to the linguistics community claiming that he was being censored.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Language Myth, The 2014 non-fiction books Cambridge University Press books Linguistics books Generative linguistics