Words and Rules

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465049710
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
"If you are not already a Steven Pinker addict, this book will make you one." -- Jared Diamond In Words and Rules, Steven Pinker explores profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple phenomenon -- regular and irregular verbs -- and examining it from every angle. With humor and verve, he covers an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities, from the history of languages to how to simulate languages on computers to major ideas in the history of Western philosophy. Through it all, Pinker presents a single, powerful idea: that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules. The idea extends beyond language and offers insight into the very nature of the human mind. This is a sparkling, eye-opening, and utterly original book by one of the world's leading cognitive scientists.

Words and Rules

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780060958404
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
How does language work, and how do we learn to speak? Why do languages change over time, and why do they have so many quirks and irregularities? In this book, the profound mysteries of language are explored.

Rules, Patterns and Words

Author: Dave Willis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521829240
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
In an accessible style, the author demonstrates the link between grammar and vocabulary.

Words and Rules

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062011901
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
How does language work? How do we learn to speak? Why do languages change? Why do they have so many quirks? What does language reveal about the mind? Steven Pinker explores the mysteries of language in this original and hugely entertaining book. Pinker uses a deceptively simple phenomenon—regular and irregular verbs—to illuminate an astonishing array of topics: the history of languages, what we can learn from children's grammatical mistakes, the genetic and neurobiological underpinnings of language, and some of the major themes in Western philosophy. The key idea—that language comprises a mental dictionary of memorized words and a mental grammar of creative rules—extends beyond language, offering insight into the nature of thinking. For fans of The Language Instinct and The Stuff of Thought, here is another cornucopia of ideas about language and mind.

Words That Work

Author: Dr. Frank Luntz
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401385745
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Book Description
The nation's premier communications expert shares his wisdom on how the words we choose can change the course of business, of politics, and of life in this country In Words That Work, Luntz offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we believe in. With chapters like "The Ten Rules of Successful Communication" and "The 21 Words and Phrases for the 21st Century," he examines how choosing the right words is essential. Nobody is in a better position to explain than Frank Luntz: He has used his knowledge of words to help more than two dozen Fortune 500 companies grow. Hell tell us why Rupert Murdoch's six-billion-dollar decision to buy DirectTV was smart because satellite was more cutting edge than "digital cable," and why pharmaceutical companies transitioned their message from "treatment" to "prevention" and "wellness." If you ever wanted to learn how to talk your way out of a traffic ticket or talk your way into a raise, this book's for you.

Learnability and Cognition, new edition

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262314282
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 509

Book Description
A classic book about language acquisition and conceptual structure, with a new preface by the author, "The Secret Life of Verbs." Before Steven Pinker wrote bestsellers on language and human nature, he wrote several technical monographs on language acquisition that have become classics in cognitive science. Learnability and Cognition, first published in 1989, brought together two big topics: how do children learn their mother tongue, and how does the mind represent basic categories of meaning such as space, time, causality, agency, and goals? The stage for this synthesis was set by the fact that when children learn a language, they come to make surprisingly subtle distinctions: pour water into the glass and fill the glass with water sound natural, but pour the glass with water and fill water into the glass sound odd. How can this happen, given that children are not reliably corrected for uttering odd sentences, and they don't just parrot back the correct ones they hear from their parents? Pinker resolves this paradox with a theory of how children acquire the meaning and uses of verbs, and explores that theory's implications for language, thought, and the relationship between them. As Pinker writes in a new preface, "The Secret Life of Verbs," the phenomena and ideas he explored in this book inspired his 2007 bestseller The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. These technical discussions, he notes, provide insight not just into language acquisition but into literary metaphor, scientific understanding, political discourse, and even the conceptions of sexuality that go into obscenity.

The Language Instinct

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062032526
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 578

Book Description
"A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

The Stuff of Thought

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101202602
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 524

Book Description
This New York Times bestseller is an exciting and fearless investigation of language from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Sense of Style and Enlightenment Now. "Curious, inventive, fearless, naughty." --The New York Times Book Review Bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence that enables him to provide lucid explanations of deep and powerful ideas. His previous books - including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate - have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today's most important popular science writers. In The Stuff of Thought, Pinker presents a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. Considering scientific questions with examples from everyday life, The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Language, Cognition, and Human Nature

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199328749
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Book Description
Collects for the first time Steven Pinker's most influential scholarly work on language and cognition. Pinker is a highly eminent cognitive scientist, and these essays emphasize the importance of language and its connections to cognition, social relationships, child development, human evolution, and theories of human nature.

Language Learnability and Language Development

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042174
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 474

Book Description
In this influential study, Steven Pinker develops a new approach to the problem of language learning. Now reprinted with new commentary by the author, this classic work continues to be an indispensable resource in developmental psycholinguistics.