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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Journal ArticleDOI
Hierarchical artificial grammar processing engages Broca's area.
TL;DR: Results indicate that Broca's area is part of a neural circuit that is responsible for the processing of hierarchical structures in an artificial grammar.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the antiquity of language: The reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences
Dan Dediu,Stephen C. Levinson +1 more
TL;DR: It is argued here that recognizably modern language is likely an ancient feature of the authors' genus pre-dating at least the common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals about half a million years ago, and argues against a saltationist scenario for the evolution of language, and toward a gradual process of culture-gene co-evolution extending to the present day.
Journal ArticleDOI
Acoustic sequences in non-human animals: a tutorial review and prospectus.
Arik Kershenbaum,Arik Kershenbaum,Daniel T. Blumstein,Marie A. Roch,Çağlar Akçay,Gregory A. Backus,Mark A. Bee,Kirsten M. Bohn,Yan Cao,Gerald G. Carter,Cristiane Cäsar,Michael H. Coen,Stacy L. DeRuiter,Laurance R. Doyle,Shimon Edelman,Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho,Todd M. Freeberg,Ellen C. Garland,Morgan L. Gustison,Heidi E. Harley,Chloé Huetz,Melissa Hughes,Julia Hyland Bruno,Amiyaal Ilany,Dezhe Z. Jin,Michael T. Johnson,Chenghui Ju,Jeremy Karnowski,Bernard Lohr,Marta B. Manser,Brenda McCowan,Eduardo Mercado,Peter M. Narins,Alex K. Piel,Megan G. Rice,Roberta Salmi,Kazutoshi Sasahara,Laela S. Sayigh,Yu Shiu,Charles T. Taylor,Edgar E. Vallejo,Sara Waller,Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez,Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez +43 more
TL;DR: A uniform, systematic, and comprehensive approach to studying sequences is proposed, with the goal of clarifying research terms used in different fields, and facilitating collaboration and comparative studies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Motor Cognition and Its Role in the Phylogeny and Ontogeny of Action Understanding.
TL;DR: The functional properties of the mirror neuron system and its direct matching mechanism indicate that action understanding may be primarily based on the motor cognition that underpins one's own capacity to act, providing a biologically plausible and theoretically unitary account for the phylogeny and ontogeny of action understanding and also its impairment, as in the case of autistic spectrum disorder.
Journal ArticleDOI
The cognitive bases of human tool use
TL;DR: It is concluded that human tool use still marks a major cognitive discontinuity between us and the authors' closest relatives and the evolution of human technologies.
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.