If you enjoyed this article, check out the book _The_Language_Instinct_ by Steven Pinker, which is all about the cognitive basis behind language.
He has a good followup that I haven't quite gotten through yet, called _The_Stuff_of_Thought_ that's a bit more about how rules of language serve as clues to how the brain processes information.
A couple of his other books are less related to language, but equally good: _The_Blank_Slate_ and _How_the_Mind_Works_.
They're all pretty accessible (certainly to a crowd like the one that reads HN), if not exactly light reading.
I just finished _The Blank Slate_ a few weeks ago. I had the overriding impression that it could have been 50% shorter had he been a little less defensive. Too much of the book seemed to be pre-emptive explanations to defuse potential criticisms or misinterpretations of some of his arguments. I've never read a book like this before, so maybe that style is common to the genre and I just didn't know to expect it?
It's probably defensive because most folks in the sociology / humanities departments _hate_ evolutionary psychology, sociobiology etc. and call it fascist, racist, elitist. Trust me on this, I know their reactions on such topics.
Yeah, considering that the evolutionary psychologists don't actually understand evolution, their defensiveness is expected: http://www.slate.com/id/2124503/
He has a good followup that I haven't quite gotten through yet, called _The_Stuff_of_Thought_ that's a bit more about how rules of language serve as clues to how the brain processes information.
A couple of his other books are less related to language, but equally good: _The_Blank_Slate_ and _How_the_Mind_Works_.
They're all pretty accessible (certainly to a crowd like the one that reads HN), if not exactly light reading.