How does language work? How do children learn their mother tongue? Why do languages change over time, making Chaucer's English almost incomprehensible? Steven Pinker explains the profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple single phenomenon and examining it from every angle. That phenomenon ¿ the existence of regular and irregular verbs ¿ connects an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities: the history of languages; the illuminating errors of children as they begin to speak; the sources of the major themes 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.
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Steven Pinker has a very good ear; you know it instantly from his prose: elegant, accessible and very witty indeed. In Words and Rules, Pinker picks apart our language to reveal pro found truths about how we think.
Do we deduce rules from the world around us and behave rationally? Or do we free-associate, discovering the world through experience and creative analogy? The obvious answer is "both". But proof of the obvious answer has long eluded philosophers of mind. Pinker, though, believes he has found it--in the English past tense.
English verbs come in two flavours. Regular verbs have past tenses that look like the present-tense verb with "-ed" on the end--today I walk, yesterday I walked, etc. The second kind of English verb is irregular. Irregular past tenses follow no rules--today I buy, but yesterday I bought; today I hold, yesterday I held.
The way children distinguish between these different sorts of verbs as they learn to talk suggests they learn both by rule and by association. Proving this is Pinker's task--and it's a bravura performance.
It takes nothing away from that other recent lit-hit, Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, to say that Pinker's book achieves an altogether deeper level of profundity. It says much for Pinker that in doing so, he can still match Bryson for wit and readability. --Simon Ings
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One of the world¿s science superstars presents a brilliantly illuminating, entertaining and cutting-edge account of how language actually works
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This is probably of less interest to the general reader then the deservedly popular "Labguage Instinct" in that it concentrates attention nearly all on regular and irregular verbs. However it still includes many very fascinating ideas about language and the brain and how they both reflect the nature of reality.
Pinker's basic premise is that the brain has the two different ways of working expressed in the title of the book- words and rules. In showing why he thinks the observed data are best explained by this dichotomy he covers the history of language, how language is processed by the brain, and two opposed theories of language: Chomsky as opposed to the distributed parallel processing model - see it is a little technical!
I am glad Pinker explains Chomsky because I am sure I would never be able to read him myself, even though I studied language at university. I also enjoy the way he writes, which is often funny, and hardly ever dull; and I find his scientific method and views on language and other matters to be both dispassionate and revealing.
I am hoping he will soon publish something else equally or more interesting.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By J. Patterson
Format:Paperback
This is a truly brilliant book, in terms of both content and form, which should be in every library. Steven Pinker has the marvellous idea of presenting language and linguistics in the round by concentrating on all the different aspects of regular and irregular verbs. So you get both breadth and depth at the same time, oh so rare in pop science books. Essential for anyone who wants to understand -- and really understand -- language a little more.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is a return to form for Steven Pinker after the somewhat disappointing 'How the Mind Works'. It could be because he's back to what he knows best- how we learn languages and the consequences of this for the psychology and philosophy of mind- but I think it's mainly because that last book broke the cardinal rule of popular science books: it had no story. This one certainly does, the story of how scientist have investigated the how and why of regular and irregular verbs. Why do both forms exist? Why do children, language learners and certain brain damaged people have problems learning one or the other form? What does this tell us about how the brain is organised more generally? Steven Pinker gives a fascinating account of scientists' research into these and other questions involved with 'Words and Rules'.
I'd still recommend 'The Language Instinct' more as a first read on the subject, but if you liked that you'll like this too, and I would rate 'The Language Instinct' as the best popular science book since 'Chaos' by James Gleick.
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Needs Thought, But The Thought Is Most Stimulating
Pinker is a highly respected linguistic scientist, and amongst that select band he is a supreme communicator, one with a common touch which makes his books as approachable as any... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Clifford
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pinker's Words and Rules
Stephen Pinker is one of the clearest and interesting modern writers on language; he is also an excellent speaker who, because of his great depth of knowledge of his own subject... Read more
Published 21 months ago by RR Waller
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Fruit Flies of Language
Psychologist, linguist, and well-known author Steven Pinker illustrates the processes of human language through an extended discussion of regular and irregular verbs. Read more
Published 23 months ago by John M. Ford
2.0 out of 5 stars
Laboured presentation of a limited subject
I was very impressed by the Language Instinct and the Blank Slate, but this book was not a joy to read. Read more
Published on 4 Aug 2004 by I. Viehoff
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good indeed
An intelligent marriage between detail and simplicity of style. Pinker takes us on a tour of language and attempts to explain how it works through the existence of regular and... Read more
Published on 30 Aug 2001
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