Thursday, January 24, 2013

Words and Rules


Book Jacket for: Words and rules : the ingredients of languageWords and Rules by Steven Pinker takes an exhaustive look at verbs and verb formation in an attempt to tease out some of the processes people are using when they use language.  Do we generate verb tenses by applying universal rules?  Do we simply memorize a list of all words & their related forms?  Are we doing some sort of mixture of the two?  Is the answer something else entirely?  How can we find out?  These are the questions Pinker is trying to address in this book.

I enjoyed the book but then I have a fascination for books about language and the process of language.  The book is quite technical & very detailed.