Steven Pinker’s influential account of language argues that our capacity for speech is an evolved, not innate, faculty of the human mind.

Moving through linguistics, psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary theory, he explains how children acquire grammar, why languages differ while sharing deep patterns, and what speech reveals about cognition itself. The work translates difficult linguistic problems into vivid, sometimes mischievous examples. Its broad evolutionary claims remain contested, particularly where Pinker leans heavily on innate mental architecture, but this is still a major popular work in the modern debate over language, mind and human nature.

This Folio Society edition is especially handsome, with integrated colour artwork by Andy Martin that treats diagrams, symbols, mouths, hands and fragments of visual language as part of the argument rather than mere decoration.

Folio Society hardback, 2008. Quarter-bound in green cloth with illustrated paper boards; printed on Cordier Wove paper. No slipcase pictured. Light shelf wear; clean and firmly bound.