Words and Rules The Ingredients of Language

by StevenPinker (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $3.44

  This text answers many questions about the amazing human ability called language. It explains the mysteries of language by examining a single construction from a dozen viewpoints, including the history of language, its simulation by computer neural networks, the use of language as a source of wit and whimsey, the illuminating errors of children as they begin to speak, and the tragic loss of language from neurological disease.
• Prizes: ','1','ChildrenBookAge: ','Book Overview: One of the world\'s science superstars presents a brilliantly illuminating, entertaining and cutting-edge account of how language actually works.','','Steven Pinker is Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of the Technology.');">

  New

  Paperback
  2001

  $14.88

  One of the world's science superstars presents a brilliantly illuminating, entertaining and cutting-edge account of how language actually works. 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.