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The Language Instinct Chapter Summary & Analysis - Chapter 5: Words, Words, Words Summary

This Study Guide consists of approximately 32 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Language Instinct.
This section contains 326 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
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Chapter 5: Words, Words, Words Summary and Analysis

Chapter 5: Words, Words, Words

"Who could not be dazzled by the creative power of the mental grammar, by its ability to convey an infinite number of thoughts with a finite set of rules?" Chap. 5, p. 126

Pinker states that the world of words is as equally fascinating as the world of syntax and that memorizing certain words takes a special skill.

People are taught to form certain tasks in their minds when it comes to words and syntax. When tested it is shown that adults have a much more difficult time using unfamiliar words when they try to decide how to add suffixes. This leads Pinker into discussing morphology - the morphing of words to fit into particular sentence structure or syntax as well as creating compound words.

Morphology is a fascinating system with a clever design. Pinker describes the presence of morphemes, delicate parts of words...
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This section contains 326 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
Purchase our The Language Instinct Study Guide
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The Language Instinct from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.
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