On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Howard Brazee wrote: > On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 10:36:05 -0700 (PDT), Philip Hart > <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > > > Everything evolved has the instinct to survive. Instead (as a start) > > I'd nominate the instinct to learn and use language. > > I've never heard the word used that way, except this is one of the many > instincts that humans share with some other animals. Which word? If "instinct", I'm referring to the (afaik) dominant school of thought in linguistics which holds that our incredible language acquisition skill as children is driven by preprogrammed traits which are primed by experience (aka "instincts"). Not to pooh-pooh the rest of the animal kingdom, but humans are qualitatively different. A group of children hearing an ungrammatical mess from parents speaking pidgin will develop a full-scale language of exquisite expressivity. That, and the emotional traits we inherited from our simian forebears and developed on the savannas etc, are what I'd call "human nature".