title: Rules of language.
abstract: Language and cognition have been explained as the products of a homogeneous associative memory structure or alternatively, of a set of genetically determined computational modules in which rules manipulate symbolic representations. Intensive study of one phenomenon of English grammar and how it is processed and acquired suggest that both theories are partly right. Regular verbs (walk-walked) are computed by a suffixation rule in a neural system for grammatical processing; irregular verbs (run-ran) are retrieved from an associative memory.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pinker
mesh_terms: D001037:Aphasia / Q000523:psychology; D001245:Association Learning; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D008568:Memory; D008960:Models, Psychological