Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language

This is the first Pinker's book I've read; this may or may not be the best choice. In a flush of serendipity, I started finding references to Dr. Pinker and his works elsewhere; turns out he is considered one of the pivotal figures of modern evolutionary psychology and an archenemy of New Age, feminist and other postmodern, erm, thinkers. That alone could have driven me to his works; but I stumbled upon this book by pure chance, and I am very glad I did."Words and rules", as its title suggests, is a less ambitious and more technical book than "The Language Instinct" or "How the Mind Works". It is likely to produce less controversy. It is less than friendly for readers without background in linguistics. There are very few far-reaching conjectures - most of the stories Pinker recounts are solid, scientifically verified data.However, the consequences which follow are disturbing and unusual. The seemingly trivial question of regular and irregular words in languages, and English irregular verbs in particular, has major repercussions for this other question Dr. Pinker had tackled earlier - how the mind works.To try to sum it up: in language acquisition and language use, humans employ two systems: memory and structure, lexicon and grammar, words and rules. They are interdependent, but distinctly separate. Their separation in human minds is illustrated by numerous examples from children's speech mistakes, speech impediments in people with various brain injuries, and neurological data, obtained by more or less direct observation of brain activity. All languages depend heavily on words; you cannot use even Esperanto unless you have mastered its basic vocabulary. As for rules, their participation in speech differs from language to language, but there is no language which does not use rules at all. People resort to rules whenever there is a failure of access to memory. For example, if you encounter a nonsense verb - "to squink" - you are much more likely to form its past tense as "squinked", not "squank", because you do not have any "squank" in your memory bank, and the regular "-ed" suffix jumps into play immediately. Pinker convincingly shows in one of the most amazing chapters of his book, that regularity does not necessarily mean statistical prevalence; true, there are many more regular verbs in English than irregulars; but in German, for example, the default plural of nouns is formed by the *least* frequent suffix, which just happens to be regular and therefore resides in the "rules" domain rather than in "words".No specific language is innate; no serious scholar would dispute it. Whether there are any linguistic universalia, is, as far as I understand, still debatable. Pinker's approach is, however, one step higher; it deals with the language instinct, with the innate ability to implement communication through language - and the tools which organize it into a system. It is probably more complex than the dualism of words and rules; but as a first approx

Pinker's Words and Rules is, in short, an awesome book worthy of the highest praise (at least, I think so). Although I do not feel I can do it justice here, hopefully I can give you enough of a hint of the book's thesis to get you interested.Pinker establishes from the start that the presence of regular and irregular verbs in all languages can tell us far more than one would immediately think. I must admit that, after reading Pinker's first chapter, I was rather skeptical as to how illuminating this apparently simple phenomenon could be. How can such a commonplace principle reveal some of the most integral components of human mind and language? It was a real pleasure, however, to watch my objections to Pinker's argument fall apart as I read the rest of the book.Briefly, Pinker traces the development of language in children and touches on many original experiments with a wide range of subjects to suggest that there is a discernible structure in our brains that accommodates the regulars and irregulars. Some (the regulars) need only be stored in root form (e.g., to talk) in our memory; our mind can inflect them appropriately (person, tense, etc.) using built-in rules of language (e.g., just add -ed to get the past tense). Other verbs (the irregulars), however, do not follow the rules; all of their forms must be stored in our lexical memory (e.g., am, are, is, was, were; although related irregulars can lead to mini-patterns that help us inflect new verbs that "seem" irregular). These principles are a shadow of the underlying structure of our minds.This is, of course, only a minuscule fraction of the information Pinker covers in Words and Rules. Best of all, he has a great sense of humor and a gift for writing that makes all of his ideas perfectly clear. The "knickknacks" of language he relates are all familiar, and yet he uses them brilliantly to make a strong case for the structure of our mind (not so familiar) that he believes is reflected by the principal of verb regularity and irregularity. Admittedly, Pinker becomes somewhat repetitive at times in this book, but I didn't find these lapses particularly troubling (I got the feeling that he could sense the skepticism that some of his readers would have and tried a little too hard to be convincing).If you have read and enjoyed How the Mind Works and/or The Language Instinct, you will certainly enjoy this book as well (if you have read The Language Instinct, then some of the ideas in Words and Rules will already be familiar to you). If you have not read Pinker yet, this is as good a place to start as any.

Whoever would think that an entire book could be written on the subject of verbs: regular and irregular. But Pinker does a dynamic job of making language sing. He recognizes the liquidity of language, its morphing and morphosis of rules, and its complete fascination. This is the third Pinker book I have read - and can't wait for the next one. I jumped into this one expecting repetition from his other books, but he continues to surprise us with completely new slants about language, completely new examples. Only his expertise and broad sense of humor remain familiar. I have to read slowly so I can absorb all the nuances suggested. Still, I hate to lay the book down. Major entertainment and fascinating information.

The thing about Steven Pinker is that he can take an esoteric subject like How the Mind Works, or 'Words and Rules', and through his wit and choice of examples, make the subject not only come alive, but charm us as well. Who would have thought that a book about irregular English verbs would be so much fun to read?

For winter break I wanted something fun to read...I intended to get Harry Potter books but got this by chance off the new books table. I have a degree in linguistics but haven't kept up with what is happening in the area. I have throughly enjoyed reading this book. The author provided plenty of background information and wonderful illustrations (and cartoons too!) to explain the points of the text. I haven't finished the book but it is going fast. I highly recommend it for teachers of literacy and language. There are terrific ways to explain the irregular, and for that matter regular, verbs in English. The glossary is a great, quick guide to terms in the field as well as terms in the text. This my first book by this author and I plan to read others.