Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
Categories: Science & Math
Words and Rules (1999) is Steven Pinker's study of how language works, built around regular and irregular verbs such as walked and went. He argues that language combines a memorized list of words with mental rules that build new forms. He draws on children's errors, the history of English, brain research and other languages to show what this distinction reveals about the mind.
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- Bill Gates: “I love books that explain things like Smil's Energy and Civilization or all of Pinker's books.”