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Ok. If I had a chance to have yet another career, it would probably be psycholinguistics, an area that I found fascinating after I left graduate school. I’m pleased to be able to offer you this 1 hour plus audio program entitled Words and Rules, The Ingredients of Language, because a) it’s about linguistics, and b) it’s from someone I knew when we were children. He done, good, our little Steven did. And he has great hair.

Why does a three year-old say “I went,” then six months later start saying “I goed”? When you first heard the word “fax,” how did you know the past tense is “faxed”? And why is it that a baseball player is said to have “flied out,” but could never have “flown out”?

After fifteen years of studying words in history, in the laboratory, and in everyday speech, Steven Pinker has worked out the dynamic relationship – searching memory vs. following rules – that determines the forms our speech takes. In one of his final lectures at MIT Pinker gives the ultimate lecture on verbs, in a rich mixture of linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and a surprising amount of humor. If you’ve ever wondered about the plural of Walkman, or why they are called the Toronto Maple Leafs and not Leaves, this lecture provides answers to these and other questions of modern language.

Your link to this program is here.