How does language work? How do children learn their mother tongue? Why do languages change over time, making Shakespearean English difficult for us and Chaucer's English almost incomprehensible? Why do languages have so many quirks and irregularities? Are they all fundamentally alike? How are new words created? Where in the brain does language reside?In Words and Rules , Steven Pinker answers these and many other questions. His book shares the wit and style of his classic, The Language Instinct , but explores language in a completely different way. In Words and Rules , Pinker explains the profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple phenomenon and examining it from every angle. The phenomenon,regular and irregular verbs,connects an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities: the history of languages, the theories of Noam Chomsky and his critics the attempts to simulate language using computer simulations of neural networks the illuminating errors of children as they begin to speak the nature of human concepts the peculiarities of the English language major ideas in the history of Western philosophy the latest techniques in identifying genes and imaging the living brain.Pinker makes sense of all of this with the help of a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules. The idea extends beyond language and offers insight into the very nature of the human mind. This is a sparkling, eye-opening and utterly original book by one of the world's leading cognitive scientists.
Steven Pinker, a native of Montreal, studied experimental psychology at McGill University and Harvard University. He is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Pinker conducts research on languages and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of eight books, including The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), The Blank Slate (2002), The Stuff of Thought (2007), and most recently The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011).
Show moreHow does language work? How do children learn their mother tongue? Why do languages change over time, making Shakespearean English difficult for us and Chaucer's English almost incomprehensible? Why do languages have so many quirks and irregularities? Are they all fundamentally alike? How are new words created? Where in the brain does language reside?In Words and Rules , Steven Pinker answers these and many other questions. His book shares the wit and style of his classic, The Language Instinct , but explores language in a completely different way. In Words and Rules , Pinker explains the profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple phenomenon and examining it from every angle. The phenomenon,regular and irregular verbs,connects an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities: the history of languages, the theories of Noam Chomsky and his critics the attempts to simulate language using computer simulations of neural networks the illuminating errors of children as they begin to speak the nature of human concepts the peculiarities of the English language major ideas in the history of Western philosophy the latest techniques in identifying genes and imaging the living brain.Pinker makes sense of all of this with the help of a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules. The idea extends beyond language and offers insight into the very nature of the human mind. This is a sparkling, eye-opening and utterly original book by one of the world's leading cognitive scientists.
Steven Pinker, a native of Montreal, studied experimental psychology at McGill University and Harvard University. He is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Pinker conducts research on languages and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of eight books, including The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), The Blank Slate (2002), The Stuff of Thought (2007), and most recently The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011).
Show more1. The Infinite Library 2. Dissection by Linguistics 3. Broken Telephone 4. In Single Combat 5. Word Nerds 6. Of Mice and Men 7. Kids Say the Darnedest Things 8. The Horrors of the German Language 9. The Black Box 10. A Digital Mind in an Analog World
Steven Pinker, a native of Montreal, studied experimental psychology at McGill University and Harvard University. He is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Pinker conducts research on languages and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, and is the author of eight books, including The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), The Blank Slate (2002), The Stuff of Thought (2007), and most recently The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011).
"the book provides a scholarly, persuasive, enjoyable, and
eminently readable account of important language
phenomena."--Nature
"[An excellent work of popular science."--Thomas Nagel, The New
Republic
"A fascinating voyage of discovery."--Sunday Telegraph
"An intellectual joyride."--Globe and Mail
"Compelling and revelatory."--Guardian
"Not only does Pinker breathe life into the topic, he makes the
reading breathtakingly exciting."--Montreal Gazette
MIT linguist Pinker builds on his previous successes (How the Mind Works; The Language Instinct) with another book explaining how we learn and deploy word, phrase and utterance. Some linguists (notably Noam Chomsky) have argued that everything in speech comes from hidden, hard-wired rules. Others (notably some computer scientists) claim that we learn language by association, picking up raw data first. Pinker argues that our brains exhibit both kinds of thought, and that we can see them both in English verbs: rule application ("combination") governs regular verbs, memory ("lookup") handles irregulars. The interplay of the two characterizes all language, perhaps all thought. Each of Pinker's 10 chapters takes up a different field of research, but all 10 concern regular and irregular forms of words. Pinker shows what scientists learn from children's speech errors (My brother got sick and pukeded); from survey questions (What do you call more than one wug?); from similar rules in varying languages (English, German and Arapesh); from theoretical models and their failings and from brain disorders like jargon anomia (whose victims use complex sentences, but say things like "nose cone" when they mean "phone call"). Sometimes Pinker explains linguists' current consensus; at other times, he makes a case for his own theoretical school. His previous books have been accused of excessive ambition; here he largely sticks to his own fields. The result, with its crisp prose and neat analogies, makes required reading for anyone interested in cognition and language. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
the book provides a scholarly, persuasive, enjoyable, and eminently
readable account of important language phenomena.--Nature
[An excellent work of popular science.--Thomas Nagel, The New
Republic
A fascinating voyage of discovery.--Sunday Telegraph
An intellectual joyride.--Globe and Mail
Compelling and revelatory.--Guardian
Not only does Pinker breathe life into the topic, he makes the
reading breathtakingly exciting.--Montreal Gazette
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