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3 results

  • 8 - Language and Evolution

  • Ryan M. Nefdt, University of Cape Town
  • Book:
    The Philosophy of Theoretical Linguistics
    Published online:
    25 April 2024
    Print publication:
    02 May 2024, pp 183-204

  • Summary

    In this final chapter, we take on an issue that perhaps precedes all the others: how and why did language evolve? Linguistic theory has recently pivoted to amass considerable research on these questions. As we’ve seen over and over in the book, simpler structures have been posited across frameworks to account for the need to explain how language evolved. However, in this book, we’ve seen many distinct approaches to understand human language. A view of language evolution that permits the pluralism of the book would be consistent with the broad approach of this work. Therefore, in this chapter, I want to turn the minimalist research agenda on its head with an alternative thesis: natural language is a complex system and its emergence is likely to have been prompted by multiple interacting factors. First, we assess the current state of the art in biolinguistics and the strong saltation claim that goes with it. Then, we challenge the assumptions that’ve resulted in the saltation picture of language evolution on evolutionary grounds. Lastly, a radical approach to language evolution in terms of complexity science is proffered based on a unique connection with systems biology.

  • 11 - The role of experimental syntax in an integrated cognitive science of language

  • from Part II - Mind, brain, behavior
  • Edited by Cedric Boeckx, Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    14 February 2013, pp 181-202

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the philosophical precedents and foundations for biolinguistics. It outlines scientific methods and research strategies for the study of mind that have yielded successful naturalistic scientific programs in the last few centuries, and indicated their philosophical origins and underpinnings. The chapter focuses on the origins of natural science methodology. Human cognitive capacities appear to fall into two general areas: commonsense understanding on the one hand and what Chomsky calls science formation on the other. The chapter describes the method of naturalistic scientific theory construction by outlining the desiderata for a naturalistic theory: what makes a theory a good one. The naturalistic science methodology applies to the subject matters of all naturalistic scientific research. The chapter explains the biolinguistic research program. It looks at the philosophical foundations for employing the tools of the science of biology in the study of language and other internal, modular, innate systems.

  • 10 - Bilingualism beyond language: On the impact of bilingualism on executive control

  • from Part I - Language development
  • Edited by Cedric Boeckx, Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics
    Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    14 February 2013, pp 160-178

  • Summary

    This chapter presents a historical sketch of biolinguistics. It explains the knowledge of language, and explores how language develops in a child, and how language evolves in a species. These three questions are interrelated in a particular way. The question of how language develops in the child depends on understanding what the properties of the language system are, the answer to the question about what knowledge of language is. The third question about how language evolved in the species, depends crucially on the answers to the first two questions. In practice, one only has partial answers to all three questions, so that it becomes necessary to study all the questions in parallel, constantly revising the answers as new empirical data becomes available. A conceptual breakthrough was achieved with the development of the principles and parameters approach to language acquisition.