What, many despairing language students have wondered, is the point of irregular verbs? In this fascinating study, Steven Pinker proposes the notion that these pesky inflections are not just mistakes or anachronisms; he uses the almost universal existence of regular and irregular verbs to argue that human languages consist, not just of a mental grammar of creative rules, but also of a complementary mental dictionary of memorised words. It is the interaction of the two, he maintains, which gives language its ability to express well, just about everything. Ranging across an impressive array of disciplines in the sciences and humanities, and drawing on an apparently inexhaustible supply of illuminating and entertaining examples and anecdotes, he delves to the deepest level of language acquisition, arriving at some compelling ideas about the nature of the human mind, and the way in which our linguistic thought processes may mirror the organisation of the natural world. Many science writers have been awarded the epithet "popular"; few have Pinker's gift for simultaneously demystifying the lay reader, and filling the mind with wonder.
