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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Domain general constraints on statistical learning.
TL;DR: Infant's learning of visual patterns shows the same constraints as infants' learning of phonotactic patterns, consistent with theories suggesting that constraints arise from domain-general sources and, as such, should operate over many kinds of stimuli in addition to linguistic stimuli.
Journal ArticleDOI
What developmental disorders can tell us about the nature and origins of language
Gary Marcus,Hugh Rabagliati +1 more
TL;DR: It is suggested that the application of the Darwinian principle of 'descent with modification' can help to reconcile much apparently inconsistent data in the study of developmental disorders.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cognitive performance in aphasia due to stroke: a systematic review
TL;DR: The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the frequency and the profile of cognitive impairment in stroke patients with aphasia, to assemble existing non-verbal instruments to be used in patients with language disorders.
Journal ArticleDOI
Combination Across Domains: An MEG Investigation into the Relationship between Mathematical, Pictorial, and Linguistic Processing
Douglas K. Bemis,Liina Pylkkänen +1 more
TL;DR: The scope of the previously identified linguistic effects is restricted to compositional operations and does not extend generally to all tasks that are merely similar in form, suggesting that the domain-generality of basic combinatorial mechanisms operates during basic linguistic composition.
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.