He supports his argument with interesting data about how first-generation African slaves who spoke mutually unintelligible languages communicated. In order to function, they developed pidgin languages, usually devoid of conventional grammatical structures. Their children, however, in the grammatical process termed creolization , moved beyond their parents' languages and developed, from the pidgin they grew up hearing, a different, more grammatically complex language. No one taught the process to them. Somehow, Pinker says, they knew it naturally.
Many people think that children learn language and other skills through imitating adults.
Young children quickly fit the conventions of the language that surrounds them to the sets of syntactic structures that are, through genetics, available to them. Teachers who deal with nonnative speakers serve their students best if they understand, at least broadly, the grammatical conventions of their students' mother tongues. Pinker writes consciously for a broader audience than Chomsky sought to address. Pinker's most apparent interest is in the dynamics of language. His energy is devoted to bringing to language study a sense of its vitality, which is, obviously, what has motivated his research.