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
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Language abilities in Williams syndrome: A critical review
TL;DR: There is, in fact, little evidence that syntax, morphology, phonology, or pragmatics are any better than predicted by nonverbal ability, although performance on receptive vocabulary tests is relatively good.
Journal ArticleDOI
Electrical stimulation of broca's area enhances implicit learning of an artificial grammar
Meinou H. de Vries,Meinou H. de Vries,Andre C. R. Barth,Sandra Maiworm,Stefan Knecht,Pienie Zwitserlood,Agnes Flöel +6 more
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that tDCS may facilitate acquisition of grammatical knowledge, a finding of potential interest for rehabilitation of aphasia, and Broca's area is specifically involved in rule-based knowledge, and here, in an improved ability to detect syntactic violations.
Book
Languages in Contact
Lisa Lim,Umberto Ansaldo +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, Ansaldo and Lim bring together research on multilingualism, code-switching, language endangerment, and globalisation into a comprehensive overview of world Englishes and creoles.
Journal ArticleDOI
Parallels and Nonparallels between Language and Music
TL;DR: The two differ in many aspects of structure and function, and, with the exception of the metrical grid, all aspects they share appear to be instances of more general capacities.
Journal ArticleDOI
Campbell's monkeys use affixation to alter call meaning.
TL;DR: It is concluded that, when referring to specific external events, non-human primates can generate meaningful acoustic variation during call production that is functionally equivalent to suffixation in human language.
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.