Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (ISBN 0-06-095840-5) is a 1999 popular linguistics book by Steven Pinker on the subject of regular and irregular verbs. In Pinker's words, the book "tries to illuminate the nature of language and mind by choosing a single phenomenon and examining it from every angle imaginable." His analysis reflects his view that language and many other aspects of human nature are innate evolutionary-psychological ada...
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Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (ISBN 0-06-095840-5) is a 1999 popular linguistics book by Steven Pinker on the subject of regular and irregular verbs. In Pinker's words, the book "tries to illuminate the nature of language and mind by choosing a single phenomenon and examining it from every angle imaginable." His analysis reflects his view that language and many other aspects of human nature are innate evolutionary-psychological adaptations. Most of the book examines studies of the form and frequency of grammatical errors in English (and to a lesser extent in German) as well as the speech of brain-damaged persons with selective aphasia.
The title, Words and Rules, refers to a model Pinker believes best represents how words are represented in the mind. He writes that words are either stored directly with their associated meanings, in a "mental dictionary", or constructed using morphological rules. Leak and rose, for example, would be stored as mental dictionary entries,...
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