I recently finished Steven Pinker's new book, Words and Rules: The
Ingredients of Language. The reviews said that the book is readable and
even entertaining, and I found that to be true. However, I must confess to
continually asking myself what the book is about. Each time I asked the
question, I would figure out what the book is about, and using that
understanding as a temporary anchor, continue reading.

I'm not sure why I had so much trouble. Perhaps I didn't understand the
significance of the main issues being discussed or why it was taking almost
three hundred pages to deal with what seemed like limited issues, which
seemed to be whether irregular verbs exist as words in a person's lexicon
or are produced by the operation of rules and whether rules are digital or
based on a person's prediction of statistical probability. (Pinker says
irregulars are words in the lexicon and rules are digital.)

Even with all this trouble, however, I learned a great deal about
linguistics along the way. An example is his list of processes involved in
the rise of new irregular and regular forms of verbs on p. 230. (There are
12 processes in all.)

I also found his diagram of the components of language (p. 23) to be
useful. The components, according to the diagram, are lexicon, phonology,
morphology, syntax, and semantics. This wasn't new to me, of course, but it
did remind me that it's impossible to isolate one component, syntax, as we
seem to be trying to do in ATEG. The operations of syntax depend on the
operations of the other components. Surely this fact is yet another reason
that teaching and learning about syntax is so difficult.

Has anyone else read this book? If so, what did you think?

Bill




William J. McCleary
3247 Bronson Hill Road
Livonia, NY 14487
716-346-6859