In
Words and Rules,
Steven Pinker answers these and many other questions. Hi new book shares the wit and style of his classic,
The Language Instinct,
but explores language in a completely different way. In this book, Pinker explains the profound mysteries of language by picking a deceptively simple single phenomenon and irregular verbs - connects an astonishing array of topics in the sciences and humanities: the history of languages; the theories of Noam Chomsky and his critics; the attempts to duplicate human language using computer simulations of neural networks; the illuminating errors of children as they begin to speak; the peculiarities of as the English language; the sources of the major ideas in the history of Western philosophy; the latest techniques in identifying genes and imaging the living brain.