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Human Nature and Grammar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2012

Wolfram Hinzen
Wolfram Hinzen
Affiliation:
Durham [email protected]
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Extract

Seeing human nature through the prism of grammar may seem rather unusual. I will argue that this is a symptom for a problem – in both discussions of human nature and grammar: Neither the theory of grammar has properly placed its subject matter within the context of an inquiry into human nature and speciation, nor have discussions of human nature properly assessed the significance of grammar.

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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 70 , July 2012 , pp. 53 - 82
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2012

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References

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114 The connection between the fragmentation of grammar and the breakdown of the deictic frame (and hence human reason) in Schizophrenia argued for by Crow (T. J. Crow, ‘The “Big Bang” Theory of the Origin of Psychosis and the Faculty of Language’, op. cit.) is a powerful further support for this conclusion, which came up during the Human Nature conference and which unfortunately I cannot go into here for reasons of space.

115 This research was made possible by the grant ‘Un-Cartesian Linguistics’ (AHRC/DFG, AH/H50009X/1). I thank my co-workers Uli Reichard and Michelle Sheehan for numerous conversations on the issues of this paper, and the organizers of the Human Nature conference for stimulating such useful discussions.