Words and Rules by Steven Pinker

Source of book: I own this. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of our Nature, is one of the top five most influential books I have read. I recommend it to everyone, particularly those who want to understand just how far the human race has come in reducing violence. (Although a recent resurgence in authoritarianism and xenophobia from toxic males like Trump, Bolsonaro, and Putin is not helping things.) That book really clarifies how violence can and is being reduced by specific ideas, many stemming from the Enlightenment. 

Words and Rules is a VERY different sort of book. For one thing, rather than being in the pop sociology sort of field, it is directly related to Pinker’s original job, as a research psychologist. For another thing, this book is seriously nerdy, detail oriented, and of a more specialized appeal. Which is to say that I found it fascinating, but not everyone will. 

Pinker sets out to make a case for a specific model for how our brains process language, based in significant part on how we use regular and irregular verbs (and to a lesser degree, regular and irregular nouns.) I’ll give a thoroughly oversimplified version of the theory, but Pinker literally spends over 300 pages (including extensive footnotes and sources) supporting his argument. Part of the supporting evidence is research that Pinker himself did with colleagues over the years, which means that he is able to describe in detail the way the experiments worked, and how they controlled for specific factors. 

Here is the very basic idea behind the theory. Humans use two basic tools for language. The first is a list of words - that is, sounds that correspond to ideas. However, we do not merely learn and memorize words. In fact, these “words” are better described as “roots,” or pieces of words that have the core meaning of words in our language. We then use the second tool to assemble them: rules. The rule processing occurs at multiple levels. For example, we use syntax and grammar to assemble our words into sentences with meaning. We obviously do not memorize every possible sentence and what it means, but use rules to put meanings together into coherent ideas. 

Pinker takes it further, however, and argues that we do not memorize all of our words, but assemble many of them according to rules. For example, we do not think of “slice” and “sliced” and “slicing” as separate words, but as the root “slice” joined to the standard “regular” suffixes to indicate verb tense. 

This works really well for “regular” verbs, but breaks down for “irregular” verbs. We do not say “runned,” for example. These exceptions actually are the way that Pinker and others have tested the theory. There is no way to describe all of the various tests - that’s what the book is about. 

Pinker starts with some history, to explain where irregulars came from in the first place - usually they are the “fossils of the long dead rules” of an ancestor language. Language is transmitted down the generations by what is essentially a game of “telephone.” Distortions accumulate, changes are made, and each generation “reanalyzes” the grammatical and syntactical meaning of what it hears. 

All languages change through the centuries. We do not speak like Shakespeare (1564-1616), who did not speak like Chaucer (1343-1400), who did not speak like the author of Beowulf (around 750-800). As the changes take place, people feel the ground eroding under their feet and in every era have predicted the imminent demise of the language. Yet the twelve hundred years of changes since Beowulf have not left us grunting like Tarzan, and that is because language change is a game of Broken Telephone.

A generation of speakers uses their lexicon and grammar to produce sentences. The younger generation listens to the sentences and tries to infer the lexicon and grammar, the remarkable feat we call language acquisition.

This gets into the weeds pretty fast - again, something I personally found fascinating. Your mileage may vary. For us grammar nerds, it is fun to find out how and why we pluralize compound words. Why, for example, is it we sometimes put the plural on the first word and other times on the last? (You’ll have to read the book to find out - it’s….complicated. And also a great occasion for a reference to “I am the very model of a modern major general.” 

I learned a new word from this book, by the way: “muzzy.” It means almost, but not quite, the same thing as “fuzzy,” the way we use it in a figurative sense. It can be defined as “blurred or indistinct” - similar to “fuzzy,” - or as “unable to think clearly; confused.” Pinker uses it in both senses, to describe words that we tend to categorize as on the line. Do we use a regular or irregular form? Neither feels quite right. And there are a number of words in this category - typically unusual and archaic sorts. For example, I might feel comfortable using “smite-smote-smitten” because I read old books. But even I find “thrive-throve-thriven” a bit...muzzy. I am more likely to use a regular “thrived” here. That’s a word, by the way, which is in the process of converting from irregular to regular. 

I have to give Pinker credit for his creative use of other materials to illustrate his points. Comic strips get significant play, particularly ones involving children and language. In addition to his Gilbert and Sullivan reference above, I also appreciated his brief quote from Leo Rosten’s delightful books about the fictional H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. (Those who have read the books will understand.) 

Perhaps even further into the ideas: Pinker discusses at length the two competing philosophical theories of the Mind, Rationalism and Empiricism. Again, a bit simplified, but in this context, rationalism claims the mind has inherent structures and works by rules, while empiricism claims the mind is a blank slate and works by associationism. One might say, “words versus rules.” Pinker describes a series of experiments by himself and by others (it’s a LOT of experimentation, believe me) using the past tense to essentially bring the two theories together in “single combat.” As one might expect from the earlier part of the book, both have elements of truth, but Rationalism wins overall. Humans have a striking ability to infer rules and use them to compensate for an inability to experience and remember every possible reality. 

Throughout the book, we move from the specific to the general. We start with how regular and irregular verb forms work and how they came to be, and end up with a broad theory as to the workings of the human brain regarding not just language, but many areas of knowledge. Pinker notes that it is often these curiosities about specific phenomena which lead to greater scientific knowledge. 

In science the pursuit of idle curiosity often pays off in deeper understanding. People’s inquisitiveness about flied out, talismans, sabertooths, still lifes, outputted, rat-infested, and other unexpected forms has enhanced our understanding of regularity and irregularity and provided an entirely new kind of evidence in favor of the words-and-rules theory.

While it would take far too long to detail all of the scope of this book, I do want to mention some of the ways in which Pinker explores the reaches of the theory. First, while, for obvious reasons, English is the language he uses most; he also gradually expands his view back along the language tree. Starting with related languages like German and Dutch, he ends up showing that, while languages differ greatly in words and syntax, they all have regular and irregular words (although not always verbs), and function using a words and rules system. In other words, it isn’t just how English works: this is how human brains work regarding language. We memorize words, but also process using rules, thus saving memory and vastly simplifying the language assembly process. 

Pinker also looks at children, and how they learn language. After all, we adult grammar snobs can discuss tenses and regularity in an academic sense, but ALL of us learned most of this intuitively before we even started school. It is actually amazing what kids learn and how fast and early they learn it. A five year old may not know all the nuances or be able to articulate the rules, but listen to one sometime: it is astonishing how fluently they navigate tenses as well as the distinction between regular and irregular even at that age. 

Finally, Pinker examines some fascinating case studies of people who have either suffered brain damage or who have developmental issues that affect one, but not both, of the systems. For example, patients who have suffered strokes and have one form or another of aphasia. Some lose the ability to remember words, but can assemble grammatical sentences. Others remember words, but cannot process the syntax correctly. As Pinker’s theory would predict, loss of the “rules” means a person struggles to correctly use regular verb tenses, while loss of “words” means they tend to use regular verb tenses on irregular verbs. Ditto for certain developmental issues which do not affect general intelligence. This chapter was quite fascinating. 

This book isn’t for everyone, but for those who love language, find science fascinating, and wish to learn more about the human psyche, it is worth a try. I read it a bit at a time, because it can overwhelm with detail. It is, however, thoroughly footnoted, with sources thoroughly cited. Pinker has a solid reputation in his field, and has published a couple of far more technical books on the same topic as Words and Rules, which is aimed at the layperson. While, for obvious reasons, there is no such thing as a One True Theory™ which explains everything, Pinker makes a good case for his view of things - and it does do a pretty good job of explaining what we observe.