June 20, 2008

A Linguistic Theory Out of the Mouths of Babes

To the Editor:

Readers of your journal unfamiliar with modern linguistics could never have guessed from Eric Banks's "Return to Fantasy Island" (The Chronicle Review, May 23) that my theories have been accepted by a large number of scholars in that field (including Steven Pinker, who endorsed the bioprogram in The Language Instinct), or that recent and widely publicized research on Nicaraguan Sign Language, fully discussed in the final chapter of my recent Bastard Tongues but nowhere