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Language acquisition recapitulates language evolution?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Teresa Satterfield
Teresa Satterfield
Affiliation:
Department of Romance Languages and Center for Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1275. [email protected]://www.umich.edu/~tsatter
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Abstract

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) focus solely on general-purpose cognitive processes in their elegant conceptualization of language evolution. However, numerous developmental facts attested in L1 acquisition confound C&C's subsequent claim that the logical problem of language acquisition now plausibly recapitulates that of language evolution. I argue that language acquisition should be viewed instead as a multi-layered construction involving the interplay of general and domain-specific learning mechanisms.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 5 , October 2008 , pp. 532 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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