A random collection of notes I found interesting from the book, not necessarily an outline. In general, the book is way too technical at the start and then becomes more applicable and interesting as it goes on.

How linguistics is often studied = "Designating a sentence as "ungrammatical" simply means that native speakers tend to avoid the sentence, cringe when they hear it, and judge it as sounding odd." p 33

"language acquisition is an example of the problem of induction -- making valid generalizations about the future from limited data available in the present, whether they involve language acquisition by a child, learning by a computer, or theorizing by the scientist." p 41

we naturally think about objects geometrically: "when the mind conceptualizes an entity in a location or in motion, it tends to ignore the internal geometry of the object and treat it as a dimensionless point or a featureless blob."

also, "the object is conceptualized as having a certain number of dimensions along which it is stretched out: one dimension, like a stick of string; two dimensions, like a sheet of paper or plywood; or three dimensions, like a couch or a watermelon. And it is conceptualized as having certain axes, parts, cavities, and boundaries that align with those dimensions." both p 48

we generally only apply possession to animate beings, which affects our usage of verbs meaning "to go" versus "to have".

how language works = "we gather our ideas to put them into words, and if our verbiage is not empty or hollow, we might get these ideas across to a listener, who can unpack our words to extract their content." p 60

"mistakes were made" -- reagan's line, great way to get around admitting fault

all linguists hate david brooks!, p 75

problems with humans trying to do statistics: "It's as if people heard the statistic that women outlive men on average and concluded that every woman outlives every man. The image of one orb floating above another seems to come more naturally to the mind than an image of two overlapping bell curves." p 86

"the beauty of the straw man is that he can be used in so many ways." very funny, p 89

Extreme nativism claims every unit of language is innate or decomposable into innate units. leads to idea that we have 50,000 innate concepts from birth. Pinker debunks each of these ideas in succession.

dictionary definitions are not isomorphic to semantic representations, making it a stupid way to debate.

our memory for words = 50-100 K, and probably at least as many idioms.

priming = "presenting a word to a person activates it in the person's mind, making it easier for the person to recognize the word (and words related to it) for a few tenths of a second." p 115 and "This suggests that for many polysemous words, each sense is a separate unit stored in the brain, which can rise and fall in activation independently of the other senses. A recent extension of the priming technique, using magnetoencephalography to measure brain activity more directly, suggests the same conclusion." p 115 Note that polysemous means two interpretations of the same sound, and that this same idea could explain why Joe Biden said "Barack America" last night, see this language log post: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=524.

Problem with linguistic determinism = "the many ways in which language might be related to thought tend to get blurred together, and banal observations are often sexed up as radical discoveries" p 125

working memory = "when an intermediate product is stored in a human mind rather than on a disk or on paper, psychologists call it working memory. the two most vivid forms of working memory are mental images, also called a visuospatial sketchpad, and snatches of inner speech, also called a phonological loop." p 129

two natural systems for keeping track of quantities = "one is an analogue estimation system, in which quantities are gauged in an approximate manner by relating them to some continuous magnitude in the head, such as a vague sense of "amount of stuff," or the extent of an imaginary line. The second system keeps track of exact quantities, but only up to a small limit, around three or four." neither can do complex math, for which you need a number system and language. there is some evidence that the first continuous magnitude one may be on a logarithmic scale (that's not from this book, see here: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2008/08/a_natural_log_o.html.

people report that they "think in" their native language, "but these echoes are not the main event in thinking; most information processing in the brain is unconscious." p 131

"babies learn words for things once they are old enough to distinguish the things in their minds. indeed, it's hard to think of how babies could learn the name for a thing unless they could think about that kind of thing as differing from other kinds of things." p 137

language is a window into thought, not the other way around: "once again we find that it is the culture and environment, not the language, that leads to differences in how readily one or another mental ability is put to use." p 148

memory is fallible: "In a classic experiment, people were presented with sets of related sentences such as The tree was in the front yard, The ants ate the jelly, The tree shaded the man, The jelly was sweet, The jelly was on the table, and so on. Soon afterward they were given a list of sentences and asked to tick off the ones they had seen. When faced with sentences that were consistent with a composite of the meanings of the original ones, such as The ants ate the sweet jelly or The tree in the front yard shaded the man, they swore that they had seen them before, even more confidently than with the sentences they had seen. This suggests that stretches of language are ordinarily discarded before they reach memory, and that it is their meanings which are stored, merged into a large database of conceptual structure." p 149

cognitive development = domain specificity

"Kill one man, and you are a murder. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." - Jean Rostand, tt

sensorimotor coordination = "there is a complex network for sensorimotor coordination that includes the cerebellum ('little brain"), the basal ganglia, and several circuits straddling the central fissure of the brain. The system is mostly analogue and codes locations precisely, but it is largely invisible to conscious thought." p 175

David Marr = computational neuroscientist = "He proposed that we actually represent shapes in the mind in blob-and-axis models rather than in raw images, because such a model is stables as the object moves relative to the viewer, while the pixels in the image are all over the place." 181, citation 58. = Biederman, 1995; Marr, 1982.

Enst Poppel believed that "We take life three seconds at a time. That interval, more or less, is the duration of an intentional movement like a handshake; of the immediate planning of a precise movement, like hitting a golf ball..." p 189 citation 80 Poppel, 2003.

spaced is used as a proxy for time in language, think of "behind us". happens in other languages too, although not always in the same direction. in chinese, vertical metaphors for time are common. earlier events are "up" and later events "down", probably due to their writing system.

politeness = pretending to give the listener options, ie, "would you pass the salt?" instead of simply "pass the salt".

Clinton famous linguistic line, very funny = "It depends upon what the meaning of the word "is" is. If "is" means is and never has been, that's one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement." p 205

an epiphenemonon = by-product of the real causes

Laplace's demon = "hypothetical imp that knows the instantaneous positions and velocities of every particle in the universe, was said to be able to calculate the entire future or past by plugging these values into the equations that express the laws of mechanics and electromagnetism. the concept of a "cause", or even a discrete "event," plays no role." p 224

"at the scales people find interesting, which are cluttered with friction and chemistry and the trillions of microscopic interactions inside other people's brains, matter in motion obeys principles of its own." p 225

"evolutionary psychologsits believe that aside from language itself, the two things that make humans stand out from other animals are a talent for tools--manipulating the physical world to our advantage--and a talent for cooperation--manipulating the social world to our advantage" p 225

lawyers invoke different theories of causation to make their points. who did what, who was responsible for what.

evolutionary psychological basis for abstract thinking = "Now imagine an evolutionary step that allowed the neural programs that carry out such reasoning to cut themselves loose from actual hunks of matter and work on symbols for just about anything. The cognitive machinery that computes relations among things, places, and causes would then be co-opted for abstract ideas. The ancestry of abstract thinking would be visible in concrete metaphors, a kind of cognitive vestige." p 242

language can be used to accommodate causal structure of the world

"frames trump facts" view of politics

tough, useful thought experiment to give to ppl = "you are a doctor trying to destroy an inoperable stomach tumor in a patient. You can send a narrow beam of radiation at the tumor, but it destroys the tumor only at a high intensity, which would also destroy the surrounding healthy tissue. At a lower intensity it would spare the healthy tissue but also fail to kill the tumor. There is a solution, but it only occurs to one person in ten: aim several beams at the tumor from different directions, so the tumor gets a dose equal to the sum of the beams, while the surrounding tissue gets the dose of a single beam." p 274 the way people can be nudged into that solution is by telling them about how a general must attack a city with splitting up his armies and attacking it from different angles, increases percentage to 35, 25 percent increase. Karl Dunker's work.

the dicey moment when you should introduce two people but can't remember one of their names = notworking. p 306, tt.

"no one goes there anymore. it's too crowded." restaurant review by yogi berra

Erving Goffman, signaling = "Goffman argues that there is a good reason we utter response cries: to signal our competence and shared understanding of the situation to a generic audience." p 367

Very funny japanese vs american businessman conversation, from "dave berry does japan":

typical japanese business meeting:

first businessman: Hello, sir.

second business man: Hello, sir.

first businessman: I am sorry.

second business man: I am extremely sorry.

first businessman: I cannot stand myself.

second business man: I am swamp scum.

first businessman: I am toenail dirt.

second business man: I should be put to death.

typical american business meeting:

first businessman: Bob!

second business man: Ed!

first businessman: How they hangin'?

second business man: One lower than the other!

first businessman: Har!

second business man: Listen, about those R-243-J's, the best we can do for you is $3.80 a unit.

first businessman: My ass, Bob.

second business man: Har!

bribe maitre d's, works nearly every time. seriously, if you remember one thing from these notes, it is to bribe maitre d's twenty dollars in order to get at the head of restaurant lines.

courtship stuff - why it is discrete, fascinating. basically it's done this way to ensure plausible deniability for all parties involved. tactless pick-up attempts are too bold, which is awkward. It's not about whether the person knows that you're interested in them, it's whether they know that you know that they're interested in you.