I started reading Pinker’s Words and Rules a few months ago (I didn’t actually do more than start then). He makes this point—apparently there are two distinct language systems running in parallel—one that simply regurgitates words (which accounts for irregulars, and the fact that very common words are more likely to be irregular) and a rule system that is more flexible but that has higher processing overhead. (Thanks for reminding me, I really need to get back and finish it.)
I’m currently reading Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought, it’s pretty interesting so far; pretty interesting so far—he compares different theories on linguistic determinism and how they fit in with various observations; he talks about which concepts are likely to be somewhat inborn, etc.
I started reading Pinker’s Words and Rules a few months ago (I didn’t actually do more than start then). He makes this point—apparently there are two distinct language systems running in parallel—one that simply regurgitates words (which accounts for irregulars, and the fact that very common words are more likely to be irregular) and a rule system that is more flexible but that has higher processing overhead. (Thanks for reminding me, I really need to get back and finish it.)
I’m currently reading Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought, it’s pretty interesting so far; pretty interesting so far—he compares different theories on linguistic determinism and how they fit in with various observations; he talks about which concepts are likely to be somewhat inborn, etc.