Steven Pinker

Steven Arthur Pinker, born on September 18, 1954, is a Canadian cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author and public intellectual, and the Johnstone Family professor of psychology at Harvard University. He specializes in visual cognition and developmental linguistics and has written two technical books that propose a general theory of language acquisition. In particular, his work with Alan Prince posits that children use default rules sometimes in error but are obliged to learn irregular forms one by one. He proposed the semantic bootstrapping theory in 1982 as an explanation of how a child formulates grammar rules when acquiring a first language.