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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The First Joke: Exploring the Evolutionary Origins of Humor
Joseph Polimeni,Jeffrey P. Reiss +1 more
TL;DR: The authors conclude that several evolutionary-related topics such as the origins of language, cognition underlying spiritual feelings, hominid group size, and primate teasing could have special relevance to the origin of humor.
Journal ArticleDOI
Agents of the mind
TL;DR: It is postulate that a network of analogous agents is an appropriate framework for exploring the dynamics of the mind.
Journal ArticleDOI
Brain correlates of language learning: the neuronal dissociation of rule-based versus similarity-based learning.
TL;DR: It is shown by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging that the brain dissociates the two mechanisms: the left anterior hippocampus supports similarity-based learning, whereas the left ventral premotor cortex is selectively engaged by abstract rule processing.
Journal ArticleDOI
Generative Grammar and the Faculty of Language: Insights, Questions, and Challenges
TL;DR: Aquest treball proporciona una visio general dels aspectes clau actuals in el camp de la gramatica generativa: l’estudi de la facultat del llenguatge huma as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
How hierarchical is language use
TL;DR: Evidence from the recent literature support the hypothesis that sequential structure may be fundamental to the comprehension, production and acquisition of human language and a preliminary sketch outlining a non-hierarchical model of language use is provided.
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.