A Look at Language as a Meeting of Linguistics, Philosophy, Psychology

WORDS AND RULES: The Ingredients of Language

by Steven Pinker

Basic Books

$26, 348 pages

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The trouble with linguistics--at least from the perspective of grammarians--is that it seems to encourage a kind of laissez-faire, “anything goes” attitude toward language. To study the history of language over the centuries is to observe the inconstancy of rules and to realize that the only constant element is change itself. Not only do some words, like “lief” or “leman,” become archaic, while new ones, like “airplane” or “byte,” are coined to describe new phenomena, but the very rules change. Spellings that now are standard were once undreamed of. Contractions like “isn’t” and “wasn’t” simply weren’t.

Where English speakers, like their French and German counterparts, once had separate forms (“thou” and “thee”) for the second-person singular, all have been subsumed in the all-purpose “you.” In some sense, it could be argued that the rules of grammar change because people keep getting them wrong. On the other hand, the rules of grammar, usage, syntax and language in general were not found on a sacred tablet but were generated by people’s desire and need for clarity in self-expression and communication.

Beyond the specific rules of a given language at a given time and place are deeper rules that govern language in general, rules that reveal the way our minds function. This is a territory where linguistics, analytical philosophy and cognitive psychology meet and mingle.

Steven Pinker, who is professor of psychology and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has not only been at the forefront of exploring this territory, but he also happens to have a knack for explaining it. Elucidating his subject with clarity, verve and humor, Pinker is one of those science writers who helps bridge the gap between scientists and the general public--or, at least, those members of the public who are genuinely interested enough and patient enough to make an effort to meet him halfway, because his books, while entertaining, are neither oversimplified nor undemanding.

The subject of his latest book, “Words and Rules,” is that truly essential part of speech, the verb. Most verbs in English are regular: They form their past and past-participle tenses by the addition of an -ed to the stem: I walk, I walked, I have walked. The rule is simple; a child can follow it. But this child just might come up with a statement like this: “Yesterday, I watched television, washed my hands and eated my dinner.” What the child hasn’t reckoned with are irregular verbs, which do not obey the -ed rule. Fortunately, according to Pinker, there are only between 150 and 180 such verbs in English, and most of them are very commonly used words, making it easy to memorize them. Almost no English speaker needs to resort to a rule to know that the past tense of “eat” is “ate,” of “have” is “had” or of “see” is “saw.”

Thus, as Pinker explains, there are two mental processes, or “tricks,” as he calls them, by which we learn verbs (and, by extension, language in general): One process is essentially memorization, the other is a kind of logical analysis that enables us to come up with new combinations based on rules. Pinker cites various experiments done on the brain that seem to suggest there are distinct areas that handle these two kinds of cognition.

Pinker’s conclusions will doubtless intrigue, delight or irritate cognitive psychologists, educators, linguists and anyone who takes an interest in these complex and intricate matters. But even those of us unequipped to evaluate the merits of his argument can take pleasure in the colorful examples and stories that he uses to illustrate his points. The Great Vowel Shift of the 15th century, how “went” became the past tense of “go,” why certain combinations of sounds are hard or easy to pronounce: Pinker’s explanations help make sense of it all.