An introduction to Chomskyan linguistics through a single feature of English: regular and irregular verbs and nouns (all other languages are covered in a single chapter). To Pinker, they are a window on the language and mind in general, of healthy children (who regularize irregular verbs but then stop) and adults as well as of sufferers from Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's chorea (each of these diseases affects the usage of regular and irregular English verbs in its own way). Pinker delves into the history of several irregular verbs (there were three verbs in Old English meaning to be: beon was similar to the Spanish ser, and eson and weson were similar to the Spanish estar; be, been and being are derived from beon, am, is and are from eson, and was and were from weson). Over the centuries, English speakers forgot rarely-used irregular past tenses of verbs and replaced them with regular ones (wrought became worked); they also constructed irregular past tenses of new verbs by analogy (snuck like stuck). Apparently, reasoning by analogy and reasoning by the rules are done by two different parts of the brain, and you need both for language and thought.

Interesting and well argued. I must say that Pinker convinces me that language is a combination between words and rules, between the need to memorize certain aspects of language and the use of rules in order to be able to use language. That the capacity to learn language, and the breaking of the code of these rules is some innate 'instinct' sounds rather likely as well. I am not as sure about some other of the implications that he mentions, like his strong adherence to the computational theory of the mind and the very evolutionary psychological understanding of human behavior. Not that they are necessarily wrong, but that they are taking to be universal theories and somewhat categorical in the way Pinker uses them. Having said that, those aspects do not come out as strongly in this book. Pinker focuses pretty succinctly on the issue of how language work in this book and he makes a really good job out of it.

I immensely enjoyed a lecture by Dr. Pinker a couple of years ago. He uses irregular verbs to explain the intersection of language development and cognition. If that doesn't strike you as interesting, then I recommend that you run away. Now. For those of you that are left, it was actually quite enjoyable. He explains mysteries of language such as children that say "growed" but won't tolerate an adult saying the same thing. The book has a minimum of linguistics jargon, and prior experience is not required. You may get some strange looks by reading this at Starbucks, but I know you enjoy that sort of thing. Or else you would not try this book.

You've got to be a bit of a language geek to enjoy this one, but if you are, then you will. Especially interesting is that he doesn't focus only on English; he draws in several language studies from Germany.

Of course, there is a bit of an agenda to try and convince you that his theory is the best available and all those other people are wrong; that the neural-networks school of thought doesn't work nearly as well as his theory, that many child psychologists are wrong about how children learn language - there's repeated stories of how children form plurals and past tenses, and after a while, one wants to say OK already, we get it! However, it's still interesting.

Easy at times; rough at times. Definitely a better read than a lot of other popular science books but still difficult as far as understanding the minuteness of grammatical detail involved. In the end, Pinker provides a wonderful and convincing new perspective on human thought and language. A novel read.

I love linguistics, and I'm a biochemist. So, a book on how we learn to use a language was fascinating to me. Although Words and Rules was written for the lay person, it is not a light read, but it is engagingly and entertainingly written. Pinker uses comics, cartoons and other humorous examples from the common culture to illustrate his points. The gist of this book is to use the examples of irregular and regular verbs to demonstrate that the mind uses both a memorized dictionary of words (e.g. the past tenses of irregular verbs) and rules (e.g. the past tenses of regular verbs) to make language. The book caused me to think of language in ways I hadn't before, even though I've studied two foreign languages in addition to my native English. If any of my brief description sounds interesting, I highly recommend this book.

Another good book by Pinker. This one seeks to deflate yuksters who say things like "why do we pronounce cough "coff"? Shouldn't it be "coo"?" Pinker quite brilliantly and deliberately demonstrates how we came to pronounce things, and also explains the apparent illogic of the expression "flied out" (as opposed to flew out) in baseball, and other similar examples. Like all of his books, it borders on the pedantic but uses humourous examples, and it took me a long time to get through (threw?) it. For serious language nerds only.

There is little doubt Pinker is a genius of sorts. Many topics covered in this book are fairly dense (and as a linguistics major in college, there have been whole courses I've taken that feel like they were almost completely summarized in one chapter), but Pinker does a good job of boiling it down to the foundation and building it up to a greater understanding through humorous analogies that everyone can understand. Of course, there are chapters I personally was not that fond of, particularly towards then end when the book deals more with the brain and language learning faculties, as these are topics I don't have much interest in. However, that does not detract from the book overall, which is excellent.

I have always known I would enjoy his books, as have heard him talk on them in documentaries - but was nice to finally read one and prove that they ARE good. This one is on a highly interesting theory of language and all the evidence for it. It was very readable, with precise, short chapters - which allows each idea its own space instead of being all piled into large chapters. Loved it. Only downside is it is over a decade old, so now I want an update :)

For a book picked up on a complete whim, this book was surprisingly enjoyable. Or perhaps it would be better to say un-surprisingly enjoyable, as I'm fairly familiar with Steven Pinker's writing and the way he has with words. Nevertheless, a sizeable book on quite a small core topic - irregular verbs - manages to convey quite a number of insightful truths and revelations.

Of course, as a non-fiction book, as well as a linguistic book, there are some dry bits near the middle, and it is a bit demanding in terms of juggling the various categories and terms in the mind unless one is familiar with them.

Nevertheless, like a roast, this book is wonderfully crisp at the beginning and end, good and hearty in the middle, and with just enough gristle to make you appreciate the rest better by contrast.

I borrowed this one and Language Instinct from a friend. I'm so tempted to "forget" to return them both. If I had to recommend one to read first, I would suggest Language Instinct. That being said, I ended up liking this one more. The final chapter brings it all home. It's very enjoyable overall. I got a bit excited having some neuroscience to latch onto (I have a degree in neurobiology), as my linguistics background is rather lacking (one class). For me, this is the kind of book that makes me want to go back to school someday.

Very interesting read. Pinker does a good job presenting his thesis that language is made up of words stored in our memory as well as rules that govern how they are used, expanding this idea by showing hour our brains chunk in different ways different pieces of words, also stored in our memory, discussing also the different reasons these rules apply or those do given different language circumstances. I enjoyed the book thoroughly and afterwards noticed, in the real world, many examples of what Pinker discussed in the text.