Dimensions
165 x 242 x 35mm
The Ingredients of Language
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?
Steven Pinker answers these and many other questions, and explains the profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple single phenomenon and examining it from every angle. The phenomenon - the existence of 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 duplicate human language using computer simulations of neural networks; the illuminating errors of children as they begin to speak; the peculiarities of the English language; the sources of the major ideas in the history of Western philosophy; the latest techniques in identifying genes and imaging the living brain.
Pinker makes sense of all this with the help of a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorised words and a mental grammar of creative rules. The idea extends beyond language and offers insights into the very nature of the human mind. 'Words And Rules' is a sparkling, eye-opening and utterly original book by one of the world's leading cognitive scientists.
