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Article: ON LANGUAGE: Report From the Wiring Squad
- Article from:
- Forward
- Article date:
- July 29, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightProvided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Robert Sklar
Forward
07-29-1994
ON LANGUAGE: Report From the Wiring Squad.
`I am reminded of a Yiddish expression, `What's the matter, is the bride too beautiful?' " writes Steven Pinker, professor and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a section of his new book, "The Language Instinct" (William Morrow & Co., $23), in which he discusses the objection of some scientists to the theory that evolution has given all human beings a complex "Universal Grammar" for learning and using language that is wired into our brains at birth.
The Yiddish expression di kalleh iz tsu sheyn is, of course, an ironic way of referring to a complaint ...