The Spontaneous Origins of Language

Which came first, grammatical rules or their exceptions? In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Morten Christiansen, professor of psychology, writes that for decades, linguists bet on rules – but disorder and flux may turn out to be language’s most essential traits.

“Language is a curious mix of order and disorder,” Christiansen writes in the piece with co-author Nick Chater. “All 7,000 of the world’s languages are characterized by elegant rules, quasi regularities and strange inconsistencies. So which came first, the order or the disorder? Answering this question turns out to be crucial to understanding how language works.”

Read the story in the Wall Street Journal.