Steven Pinker - Words and Rules: The Ingredients Of Language

Praise for Words and Rules

Not only does Pinker breathe life into the topic, he makes the reading breathtakingly exciting. The Montreal Gazette

Pinkers argument is appealing, and Words and Rules brims with delightful data. Word-lovers may find themselves skimming the book for clever bits. Discover

Gripping throughout.... A fascinating survey. Independent on Sunday

Pinker demonstrates [his argument] with clarity, wit, and even the occasional belly laugh.... A finely balanced, easily accessible book that takes readers through a strongly supported argument to the frontiers of science for a glimpse into the mysteries inside us, and how they reflect our semi-regular world. Philadelphia City Paper

A fascinating voyage of discovery. Sunday Telegraph

With its crisp prose and neat analogies, [Words and Rules is] required reading for anyone interested in cognition and language. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Pinker succeeds in generating light rather than heat in a dispute that has been noted for acrimony rather than insight. This is no mean achievement, but, as a bonus, he extends the argument to cover the nature of the mind more generally.... It seems initially implausible that meditating on the past tense of sing could enable one to derive generalizations about how our mental categories reflect the lawful categories of the world, but Pinker has done it. Hats off. Times Literary Supplement

Words and Rules is a demanding, full-length book about irregular verbs. Yet this description gives little sense of its flavor and excitement.... Written with characteristic energy and enthusiasm, it sweeps across some pretty dry terrain but remains gripping throughout.... A fascinating survey of many key areas of linguistics. Independent

Pinkers impressive case for a hybrid theory is sure to advance debate and acquaint lay readers with his subject matter. Fans of his other popular books will find many of the same virtues in this one. Pinker has a keen sense of humor, guaranteed to elicit more chuckles than groans, and an admirable ability to make difficult material accessible and engaging. Pinker has a marvelous ability to make each mundane idiosyncrasy of speech into a riveting detective story. Chicago Tribune

Perhaps the chief pleasures of this book do not lie in his overall theories of language, as much as in his delightful sense of humor and his individual explanations of how the language worksand why. This book will be of interest to anyone fascinated by language. Christian Science Monitor

[Discussions] are offered not in dry academic prose, but through lucidly written and often amusing examples. Boston Globe

Despite the sometimes technical nature of the discussion... the book is compulsively readable. Pinker writes clearly and enthusiastically, enlivening his prose with scintillating wordplay, helpful analogies and the occasional Far Side cartoon.... Simultaneously amusing and enlightening, Words and Rules demonstrates that Pinker amply deserves his reputation as the best popularizer of linguistics writing today. New York City Search

This is complicated stuff, but Pinker is a fine popularizer. Perhaps he uses dry academic prose for his research, but here he uses lucid and amusing examples.... He shows how complicated these linguistic ideas are without stupefying the layman. The Times Arcadia (Columbus, MI)

A brilliantly illuminating, entertaining and cutting-edge account of how language actually works by one of the worlds leading cognitive scientists. Books Magazine

[Pinker] explains technical matters in day-to-day language.... He does not oversimplify the issues, and his summarizing of academic articles is exemplary.... [Readers will] have a good idea of how a thorough researcher approaches a task. Like a hungry dog, Pinker chews just about every possible piece of meat off this academic bone, and licks it clean. Literary Review

A deliciously erudite, if somewhat grainy, glass of Metamucil for the legion of English speakers troubled by irregular verbs. New York Times Magazine

OTHER BOOKS BY STEVEN PINKER

Language Learnability and Language Development

Learnability and Cognition

The Language Instinct

How the Mind Works

The Blank Slate

The Stuff of Thought

The Better Angels of Our Nature

The Sense of Style

Drawing of wugs by Jean Berko Gleason reprinted with the artists permission.

THE FAR SIDE 1987 FARWORKS, INC. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

False Plural (7, 6) by Trazom, reprinted with the permission of the National Puzzlers League.

Irregular Verbs: Think, Thank, Thunk drawing by Suzy Becker, reprinted with the artists permission.

ARLO & JANIS reprinted by permission of Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc.

ZITS reprinted with special permission of King Features Syndicate.

FUNKY WINKERBEAN reprinted with special permission of North America Syndicate.

CALVIN AND HOBBES 1993 Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

The Jellyfish reprinted with permission of Susan Kinsolving.

FAMILY CIRCUS reprinted with special permission of King Features Syndicate.

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE reprinted by permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

ROBOTMAN reprinted by permission of Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc.

Cartoon by Jeff Kaufman originally published in The New Yorker, reprinted with permission of The Cartoon Bank.

BLOOM COUNTY reprinted by permission of Berkeley Breathed.

Copyright 1999 by Steven Pinker.

Hardcover first published in 1999 by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

Paperback published in 2015 by Basic Books

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 8104145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

The Library of Congress has cataloged the 1999 hardcover as follows:

Pinker, Steven, 1954

Words and rules : the ingredients of language / Steven Pinker.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Language and languages. 2. Grammar, Comparative and generalVerb. I. Title.

P106.P477 1999

41521dc21 99-043013

ISBN 978-0-465-04971-4 (e-book)

HarperCollins First Perennial paperback edition published in 2000; First Harper Perennial edition published in 2011.

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TO THE PSYMORGS

CONTENTS

T his book tries to illuminate the nature of language and mind by choosing a single phenomenon and examining it from every angle imaginable. That phenomenon is regular and irregular verbs, the bane of every language student.

At first glance that approach might seem to lie in the great academic tradition of knowing more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing. But please dont put the book down just yet. Seeing the world in a grain of sand is often the way of science, as when geneticists agreed to study the lowly fruit fly so that their findings might cumulate into a deep understanding that would have been impossible had each scientist started from scratch with a different organism. Like fruit flies, regular and irregular verbs are small and easy to breed, and they contain, in an easily visible form, the machinery that powers larger phenomena in all their glorious complexity.