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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Perceptual and memory constraints on language acquisition
TL;DR: It is shown that two basic mechanisms can explain many results in artificial grammar learning experiments, and different linguistic regularities ranging from stress assignment to interfaces between different components of grammar.
Book
How Language Began: Gesture and Speech in Human Evolution
TL;DR: This chapter discusses gesture and the origin of language, how it evolved (in part) - the Growth Point, and Ontogenesis in evolution - evolution in ontogenesis.
Journal ArticleDOI
The language void: the need for multimodality in primate communication research
TL;DR: A systematic review of the primate communication literature reveals that vocal, gestural and facial signals have attracted differing theoretical and methodological approaches, rendering cross-modal comparisons problematic.
Journal ArticleDOI
Exorcising Grice's ghost: an empirical approach to studying intentional communication in animals
Simon W. Townsend,Simon W. Townsend,Sonja E. Koski,Sonja E. Koski,Richard W. Byrne,Katie E. Slocombe,Balthasar Bickel,Markus Boeckle,Ines Braga Goncalves,Judith M. Burkart,Tom P. Flower,Florence Gaunet,Hans Johann Glock,Thibaud Gruber,David A. W. A. M. Jansen,Katja Liebal,Angelika Linke,Ádám Miklósi,Richard Moore,Carel P. van Schaik,Sabine Stoll,Alex L. Vail,Bridget M. Waller,Markus Wild,Klaus Zuberbühler,Klaus Zuberbühler,Marta B. Manser +26 more
TL;DR: A unified approach to intentional communication is revisited and structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated.
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.