Journal ArticleDOI
The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?
TLDR
It is argued that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation and how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience is suggested.Abstract:
We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB)and in the narrow sense (FLN) . FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-intentional system, and the computational mechanisms for recursion, providing the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements. We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations).read more
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Variability in the learning of complex morphophonology
TL;DR: This paper explored how theories on the relationship between language and domain-general cognitive capabilities might account for individual variation in second language learning, and found that a significant amount of variation in learning success is accounted for by these measures of memory in accordance with the hypothesis.
Journal ArticleDOI
Human evolution and cognition.
TL;DR: The hominid fossil and archaeological records show clearly that biological and technological innovations have typically been highly sporadic, and totally out of phase, since the invention of stone tools some 2.5 million years ago; and their emergence ushered in an entirely new pattern of technological innovation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Processing multiple non-adjacent dependencies: evidence from sequence learning
Meinou H. de Vries,Karl Magnus Petersson,Sebastian Geukes,Pienie Zwitserlood,Morten H. Christiansen +4 more
TL;DR: This work cross-modally combined serial reaction time and artificial-grammar learning paradigms to investigate the processing of multiple nested and crossed dependencies, containing either three or two dependencies, and suggests constraints are determined by the specific ordering of the non-adjacent dependencies.
Journal ArticleDOI
The acquisition of a linguistic skill by adults: Procedural and declarative memory interact in the learning of an artificial morphological rule
TL;DR: It is suggested that both procedural and declarative memory contribute differentially to the learning of distinct aspects of a morphological rule, at different stages along the mastering of skilled linguistic performance.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mental time travel and the shaping of language
TL;DR: For instance, this paper showed that episodic memory can be regarded as part of a more general system, unique to humans, for mental time travel and the construction of future episodes.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
Ann S. Ferebee,Noam Chomsky +1 more
TL;DR: Methodological preliminaries of generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence; theory of performance; organization of a generative grammar; justification of grammar; descriptive and explanatory theories; evaluation procedures; linguistic theory and language learning.
Book
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
TL;DR: Generative grammars as theories of linguistic competence as discussed by the authors have been used as a theory of performance for language learning. But they have not yet been applied to the problem of language modeling.
Book
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
TL;DR: In this paper, secondary sexual characters of fishes, amphibians and reptiles are presented. But the authors focus on the secondary sexual characteristics of fishes and amphibians rather than the primary sexual characters.
Book
The Minimalist Program
TL;DR: This twentieth-anniversary edition reissues Noam Chomsky's classic work The Minimalist Program with a new preface by the author, which emphasizes that the minimalist approach developed in the book and in subsequent work "is a program, not a theory."
Journal Article
The descent of man and selection in relation to sex: documento
TL;DR: Part I. Sexual Selection (continued): Secondary sexual characters of fishes, amphibians and reptiles, and secondarySexual characters of birds.