SelectedTheoretical Papers by Steven Pinker

Pinker, S. (1979) Formal models of language learning. Cognition, 7, 217-283. Reprinted(1994) in N. Sheehy & T. Chapman (Eds.), Cognitive Science. Cheltenham, UK:Edward Elgar Publishing.

Pinker, S. (1982). Atheory of the acquisition of lexical interpretive grammars. In J. Bresnan(Ed.), The Mental  Representation  of Grammatical Relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Pinker, S. (1984).Visual cognition: an introduction. Cognition, 18, 1-63.  Reprinted in S. Pinker  (Ed.) (1985) Visual Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MITPress. Reprinted (1995) in M. Brosnan (Ed.), Cognitive Psychology; Dartford, UK:Greenwich University Press.

Pinker, S. (1987). Thebootstrapping problem in language acquisition. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanismsof language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Reprinted with new epilogue inG. Hatano (Ed.) (1992), Ninchikagaku handobukku (Handbook ofcognitive science). Japan: Kyoritsu-Shuppan.

Pinker, S. (1988) Acomputational theory of the mental imagery medium. In M. Denis, J. Engelkamp,& J. T. E. Richardson (Eds.), Cognitive and neuropsychologicalapproaches to mental imagery. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.

Pinker, S. &Prince, A. (1988) On language and connectionism: Analysis of a paralleldistributed processing model of language acquisition. Cognition, 28, 73-193. Reprinted in S. Pinker & J. Mehler (Eds.) (1988) Connectionsand symbols.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Pinker, S. (1990). Atheory of graph comprehension. In R. Friedle (Ed.), Artificialintelligence and the future oftesting.Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Pinker, S. &Bloom, P. (1990) Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral andBrain Sciences, 13,707-784. Reprinted in J. Barkow,L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.) (1991), The Adapted Mind: EvolutionaryPsychology and the Generation of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Reprintedin Finnish in Psykologia, 31(4), s1-s20, 31(5), s1-s23.

Pinker, S. (1993) Theacquisition of argument structure. In H. Nakajima & Y. Otsu (Eds.), Argument  structure: Its syntax and acquisition. Special Publicationsof the English Linguistic Society of Japan, Volume 1. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.

Pinker, S. (1994) Howcould a child use verb syntax to learn verb semantics? Lingua,  92, 377-410. Reprinted in L. Gleitman andB. Landau (Eds.), (1994) The acquisition of the lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.

Pinker, S., Prince, A.(1996), The nature of human concepts: evidence from an unusual source. Communicationand Cognition, 29,307-361. Reprinted (1999) in P. Van Loocke (Ed.), The nature, representationand evolution of concepts. London: Routledge. Reprinted (1999) in R. Jackendoff, P. Bloom, and K. Wynn (Eds.), Language,logic, and concepts: Essays in memory of John Macnamara. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.

Pinker, S. (2000) Theblank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine. In G. B. Peterson(Ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 21. Salt Lake City:University of Utah Press.

Pinker, S. (2003)Language as an adaptation to the cognitive niche. In M. Christiansen & S.Kirby (Eds.), Language evolution: States of the Art. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

Pinker, S. (2003)Whence religious belief? In P. Kurtz (Ed.), Science and religion: Are theycompatible? Amherst,NY: Prometheus Books.

Pinker, S. (2004) Whynature and nurture won’t go away. Daedalus, 133, Fall, 5-17.

Pinker, S. &Jackendoff, R. (2005) What’s special about the human language faculty? Cognition,95,201-236.

Pinker, S. (2005) Sohow does themind work? (Review and reply to Jerry Fodor’s “The Mind Doesn’t Work thatWay”), Mind and Language, 20, 1-24.

Pinker, S. (2006) Thebiology of fiction. In R. Headlam-Wells (Ed.), Human nature: Fact andfiction.London: Continuum.

Pinker, S. (2006) Deepcommonalities between life and mind. In A. Grafen & M. Ridley (Eds.), RichardDawkins: How a scientist changed the way we think. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.