Words & Rules 

by Steven Pinker 

Chapter 1

The infinite Library

 

This book is very special, many people can think is a Little boaring to look for regular and irregular verbs in it all the book but at the end there are basic things that is needed all of us to comprehend. This chapter in an introduction to languate .

 

Words : are memorized arbitrary pairing between a sound and a meaning. 

 

Rules: are what gives us that code or protocol that specifies how words must be arranged into specific combination between words, phrases and sentences.

 

 

Grammar is an example of a combinatorial system, in which a small inventory of elements can be assembled by rules into an immerse set of distinct objects. 

 

Regular past tense verbs are predictable, while irregulars are not. Irregulars are unpredictable in form and restricted to a list because they are memorized and retrieved as individual words.

 

 

“The theory that regular forms are generated by rule and irregular forms are retrieved but rote is pleasing not only because it explains the differences in productivity between the two patterns but also because it fits nicely into the larger picture of the design of language.”

 

 

 

Chapter 2

Dissection by Linguistic

 

Regular and irregular words have long served metaphors for the law-abiding and the quirky.  Their forms do not work in isolation, they are part of the integrated living system we call a language.

 

 

Regular verbs= Rules

Irregulars: have a systematical behavior, a controlled one that can be reduced to key elements.

 

Morphology: tam of rules that combine words and parts of words into bigger words.

 

Syntax: team of rules that combine words into phrases and sentences.

 

Semantics: interface between language and mind.

 

Phonology: interface between language and the mouth and ear.

 

 

Morphology

 

-Derivation-: rules that form a new word out of an old one.

 

-Inflection: Rules that modify a word to fit its role in a sentence

 

 

Syncretism: one kind of violation of the simplest conceivable system in which every sound has one meaning.

 

 

Chapter 3

Broke Phone

 

This chapter is about irregular verbs and nouns and how the language change by centuries it is like a Broken Telephone Pinker describe it.

 

“Words aren’t regular or irregular across the board. Words are regular or irregular only with respect to certain inflections, some more tolerant of irregularity than others.”

Irregular Nouns:

 

Present progressive suffix- ing  (jumping)

 

Possessive  (´s)

Irregular plurals in nouns (woman- women) (Child- children)

Regular- s ending change their consonant from unvoiced to voiced.(leaf-leaves)

 

Nouns that take Latin or Greek plurals.

 

 

Chapter 4

In single Combat

 

This chapter introduce us to  Pinkers words and rules theory.

 

Regular Forms: generate by rules.

Irregular: memorized by role.

 

Grammar: symbols stand for words and rules arrange them into phrases and sentences.

 

Logic: symbols stands for concepts and the rules string them into chains of inference.

 

Irregular verbs we have to memorize by rules but also here I wrote some patterns of them that can help us to recognize them.

 

-Change-change similarity: the change from stem to past in one verb is similar to the change from stem to past in another verb.

 

-Stem Past similarity: irregular part tense forms similar in sound to their bas forms.

 

• Stem pattern: similarity in the sound.

 

 

Chomsky and Halle theory

-Association theory

-Memorize words and associate with others.

- Instead of strictly rules, merely associations occurring in the mind.

 

Rationalists Theory

-Believethat there is a rule for every part of language.

-They think rule can be applied to all languages.

 

Words and Rules Theory

-Regular verbs are computed by a rule that combines a symbol for a verb and a symbol for a suffix.

- Irregular verbs part of memory.

 

Chapter 5

 

Words Nerds

 

This chapters looks at how words and rules pop into mind as we use language in real time.

 

In this chapter Pinker try to specify how and why our brain not function in a strict mechanism.

 

Blocking Principle: irregular fomr blocks by the rule added to state in past tense.

 

Lexical decision: try to tell the moment at which people are willing to say that a words is a words and not just something that looks like a word. (Repetition / priming).

 

Chapter 6

Of Mice and Men

 

This chapter is focused on root of the words. Rules provide a scheme in which the properties of the new combination can be computed from lands.

 

Semantic theory: language is a direct conversion from meaning and states that the extra input. Semantic stretching in itself has no effect on a words past tense or plural.

 

-If a new word is formed from an old irregular word by prefixing, the new word stays irregular. When eats begets overat, the new past tense is overate, not overated.

 

-New nouns constantly are being formed by compounding a word  onto an existing noun.

 

-Using a noun as a metaphor also does nothing to its irregularity.

 

Irregular plural or past tense form a root linked to another root. But when a word is rootless from inflected forms stores in memory.

 

Happens in:

• Onomatopoeia

• Quotations (`s)

• Based on a name (Martin Child´s)

• Foreign borrowing

Connected by artificial means

 

Grammatical rules: point to define new combinations in which the meaning of the whole can be computed form meanings.

 

Rules syntax: build words and sentences out of words.

Morphology: complex words out of a simple words.

 

Chapter7

Kids Say the Darnedest things

 

In this chapter Pinker explain us how Children regularize anything they can.

 

Language instinct:  deducing that words are not correct.

 

Irregular forms are not predictables, so the only way to know them is to have heard them before and remember them.

 

Children almost certainly do not solve the language acquisition problem by depending on negative feedback.

 

Chapter 8

The horrors of the German Language

 

All languages have a stock of morphemes and a set of conventions for assembling them into meaningful combinations such as complex words, phrases, and sentences.

 

All languages have irregularities, one of the languages that inflicts irregular forms in the speakers the majority of time is German.

 

It has three forms of verbs:

 

1) infinitive

2) preterit

3) participle

 

Irregulars in English store in associative memory.

 

-English.-s applies to unusual sounding words and to words borrowed from other languages; so does German –s.

 

German –s also can set up in phonological territories that are tightly associated with other plurals.

 

Chapter 9

The Black Box

 

All the time in my life I has fear to learn about all things about brain and how it works. I have the prejudice that is very difficult to understand it so now that I read this chapter I open my mind to try to learn about it.

 

The Brain have two hemispheres:

 

Right

 

Left: language particular grammar .

 

Central sulcus subdivides each of the hemisphere in two. Its front bank is the motor strip, which controls movement.

 

 

 

Front bank: motorstip = frontal lobe (carries out prerequisites to action).

 

Rear bank: somatosensory strip: parietal, occipital and temporal lobe (registers touch, senses)

 

Sylvian Fissure: Divides the temporal lobe from the rest of the brain (language areas). It is divided in Broca´s area (speech, verbal, short term memory, comprehension of sentences) and Wernicke´s area (connecting sounds of words with meanings). 

 

Chapter 10

A digital Mind in an Analog World

 

In this chapter Pinker describes to us how words and rules ingredient is language.

 

 

 

2 principles of language are:

 

• A memory system that stores and retrieves words (arbitrary system)

• A system of symbolic computation that generates grammatical combinations of words (infinite use of a finite media).

 

 

Words in the sense of memorized links between sound and meaning: rules in the sense of operations that assemble words into combinations whose meaning can be computed from the meaning of the words and the way they are arranged.