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Steven Pinker

Words And Rules: The Ingredients Of Language (Science Masters Series) Hardcover – October 28, 1999

by Steven Pinker (Author)

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Who other than MIT scientist Steven Pinker could explore a single linguistic phenomenon - the use of irregular verbs - from the vantage points of psychology, biology, history, philosophy, linguistics, and child development?In Words and Rules , Pinker answers questions about the miraculous human ability called language and does it in the gripping, witty style of his other bestsellers. As the stories unfold, the reader is immersed in the evolution of the English language over the centuries, the theories of Noam Chomsky and his critics, the simulation of neural networks on computers, the illuminating errors of children as they begin to speak, the tragic loss of language from neurological disease, and more illustrations using humorous wordplay than anyone would have thought possible. Pinker makes sense of all these phenomena with the help of a single powerful idea: that the essence of language is a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules.Pinker is well known for his skills of explaining the art and science of language. His bestselling book How the Mind Works was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and was the #1 bestselling book for amazon.com in 1997. His other bestseller The Language Instinct was named one of the Ten Best Books of 1994 by The New York Times Book Review and nominated for the William James Book Award by the American Psychological Association.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Human languages are capable of expressing a literally endless number of different ideas. How do we manage it--so effortlessly that we scarcely ever stop to think about it? In Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, a look at the simple concepts that we use to devise works as complex as love sonnets and tax laws, renowned neuroscientist and linguist Steven Pinker shows us how. The latest linguistic research suggests that each of us stores a limited (though large) number of words and word-parts in memory and manipulates them with a much smaller number of rules to produce every writing and utterance, and Pinker explains every step of the way with engaging good humor.

Pinker's enthusiasm for the subject infects the reader, particularly as he emphasizes the relation between how we communicate and how we think. What does it mean that a small child who has never heard the word wug can tell a researcher that when one wug meets another, there are two wugs? Some rule must be telling the child that English plurals end in -s, which also explains mistakes like mouses. Is our communication linked inextricably with our thinking? Pinker says yes, and it's hard to disagree. Words and Rules is an excellent introduction to and overview of current thinking about language, and will greatly reward the careful reader with new ways of thinking about how we think, talk, and write. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

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 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Series: Science Masters Series
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (October 28, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0465072690
ISBN-13: 978-0465072699
Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1.2 x 9.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 51 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #854,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8943 in Foreign Language Reference
- #1637 in Grammar Reference (Books)
- #3106 in Linguistics Reference

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A very nicely written book by Steven Pinker

April 20, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A very nicely written book by Steven Pinker, with the usual and very well known Chomskian approach. As a University Professor, I do not share Pinker's approach and his views, but I find the book useful for courses in Linguistics, and some examples are also applicable to the history of the origins of numbers and numbering systems.

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Maria De La Torre

Pinker’s words help the reader understand language

April 27, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

The book Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language was written by Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist who has written a variety of books
about language and other topics related to psychology. He is also currently a psychology professor at Harvard University. The book looks at words and rules, which are what language consists of and helps us understand language. Steven Pinker’s language in this book makes it very easy for the reader to understand complex information about how our brain works the way it does when it comes to language. He provides real-life examples and things that are “relatable” in order to better explain his findings to the reader.
The book begins with Pinker describing the “mental dictionary,” which is described almost as similarly as vocabulary by Pinker, in which a string of letters and sounds is associated with something, whether it be an object, person, place, or thing. After the idea of a “mental dictionary,” is interested, Pinker goes into details about the “combinatorial system,” which is when words provide an infinite number of combinations which can become into phrases and sentences and paragraphs. But because of grammar and other rules that we learn throughout our lives, these combinations go down immensely. After explaining these two phenomena, he emphasizes the title of the book by explaining that the understanding of words and rules are critical in the dissection of language. Then, regular and irregular verbs are brought up which gives a better look into the rules, because a study is done on 7-year olds showing that kids add –s to make a word plural and add –ed to make a word past tense, despite never hearing the word before. After this, he brings up irregular verbs and how there are way less of these than regular verbs and these require to store them in your “mental dictionary.” Pinker also examines how our brains react to new words. He explains this with the “words and rules” theory, which states that people use rules for regular verbs and people use their memory and patterns for irregular verbs. Pinker points out that regular verbs do not have to be retrieved by the memory at all, while people have to rely on their memory for irregular verbs in order to dig up similar irregular verbs and apply its rules to a new irregular word. Another theory that is closely looked at is the “word structure theory,” in which people understand that a word or a phrase hails from another word, but might not know why or how. In this book, Pinker also closely examines children and the mistakes they make of added –ed to past-tense irregular verbs (goed) and sometimes even –ed to past-tense irregular verbs that they have said correctly, such as wented (went). Pinker then explains his theory of the blocking principle, which is when children need to listen to past-tense irregular verbs being said in order for them to register in their minds that certain words are irregular and you cannot just add –ed to the ending. Also, he adds that a parent correcting their child when they use an ungrammatical word is ineffective. He mentions that parents correcting their children does not work, because children have the rules in their head and apply them and that the rules for irregular verbs must be learned. Toward the end of the book, Pinker goes into the brain and its significance in language. He demonstrates how damage in different parts of the brain could affect different parts of speech; for example, more damage could be done to the mental grammar than the mental dictionary. He then concludes the book by explaining that our mind is digital because we remember rules but also have to retrieve specific information.
Steve Pinker’s book explaining words and rules is full of examples which are relatable to whoever is reading which makes it easier to follow along throughout the book and understand what he is trying to say. By providing an example everyone can connect with, about the younger people mispronouncing words he emphasizes his theory of “words and rules” by taking the reader back to his or her earliest stages of learning to speak. The various studies mentioned throughout the book, primarily involving children, are crucial to Pinker’s argument about irregular verbs and what our brain can pick up immediately versus what is recorded through patterns, like his study involving children and how they can correct themselves despite picking the wrong verbiage. His explanation of ways in which people try to substitute our understanding of ‘irregular’ verbs is well explained, by his pointing out that it would take us several seconds, or even minutes, to decipher the word we were trying to say if we used some of the more complex systems people have tried coming up with throughout history. One complaint I do have about the book though is the various charts that do not seem to help me with the underlying message of what he is trying to get across. The book could do without them and still be legible and clear. The dialogues of fresh English-speakers present in the book are good at illustrating the different points he is making about language and what the trouble areas are for them and what is simple for them. When explaining irregular verbs, he provides a string of the same word in different forms to illustrate the patterns involved in knowing and retrieving them. Also, throughout the book there are illustrations, such as the one of the brain, that shows different damages in different areas of the brain, and there also little comic strips throughout the book. These illustrations support the argument he is making. Overall, it was an informative book that explained the mechanisms of our language and how we learn and react to it.
This book about language by Steven Pinker is a well-written, informative book that delves deeper into regular and irregular verbs and our minds. The various studies and illustrations throughout the book help illustrate he’s making at the point the illustration shows up. Pinker uses his words well to explain his words and rules theory about language, and it is fun to read.

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Jeff Wilson

Awesome mind, needs ghostwriter.

February 19, 2019

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Steven Pinker is one of my favorite intellectuals. I think he is a brilliant person and enjoy very much many of the topics he chooses to write about, however, he is a rather dry speaker and writer. Perhaps if he had someone breathe some life into his work it would be more popular. Regardless, this will not prevent me from buying his books...it just takes me longer to finish in between naps.

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George

My head still hurts

November 18, 2006

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I have long been a Steven Pinker fan. It is great to have a neurologist appear who can explain the workings of the brain in a fairly easy to understand, often humorous and precise way. Words & Rules, though made my head hurt. I felt a little like the rat in Flowers for Algernon: a vague feeling that I might have understood this more easily at one time not too long ago, but boy is this difficult to wade through now. Which is to say I blame myself rather than Pinker. I think it's a very difficult subject and my tenuous grasp of grammar didn't help. Unlike his previous books, an actual understanding of the parts of speech helps here.

That said, delving into the minutiae of how the brain works is ultimately rewarding, even if I only understood maybe 75% of this. Watching vicariously as Pinker et al close in how how we think and talk is truly awesome. I find myself paying close attention to how I speak; how I hesitate in choosing words; what associations I seem to need to find a word or person... . Very cool, though you can probably get sucked into some kind of fugue state if you overdo it.

Still highly recommended, but make sure you're snowed in somewhere and have a lot of coffee.

George

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John M. Ford

The Fruit Flies of Language

August 9, 2010

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Psychologist, linguist, and well-known author Steven Pinker illustrates the processes of human language through an extended discussion of regular and irregular verbs. He skillfully uses our grade-school struggles with the rules and exceptions of English vocabulary to explore the larger realm of human language competence. "Like fruit flies, regular and irregular verbs are small and easy to breed, and they contain, in easily visible form, the machinery that powers larger phenomena in all their glorious complexity."

Pinker's book explores in great detail the two different systems of the brain that produce language. One is regular and rule-like and produces patterns that range from the regular forms of some verbs to the grammatical and organizational regularities of larger chunks of language. The other is idiosyncratic and irregular and stores pieces of our linguistic competence that frustrate linguists and second-graders alike. Our working language is shaped by the interplay between these systems. They both leave their traces in the historical changes in language, similarities between different languages, the creative mistakes children and adults make while learning language, and in the way we invent and reinvent new words.

This book is recommended to anyone who wants to understand how our mind enables us to use language. Don't worry about being trapped into a narrow dissection of verbs--the book simply uses them as an increasingly-familiar theme to explore larger language issues. And don't shrink from an imagined tangle of technical terminology. Pinker's use of language is as deft as his grasp of it. His book is an enjoyable, as well as an informative read.

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