The Biolinguistic Enterprise

New Perspectives on the Evolution and Nature of the Human Language Faculty

Anna Maria Di Sciullo, Cedric Boeckx (Herausgeber)

Universitat De Barcelona (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

576 Seiten

2011
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-955327-3 (ISBN)

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This book, by leading scholars, represents some of the main work in progress in biolinguistics. It offers fresh perspectives on language evolution and variation, new developments in theoretical linguistics, and insights on the relations between variation in language and variation in biology. The authors address the Darwinian questions on the origin and evolution of language from a minimalist perspective, and provide elegant solutions to the evolutionary gap between human language and communication in all other organisms. They consider language variation in the context of current biological approaches to species diversity - the 'evo-devo revolution' - which bring to light deep homologies between organisms. In dispensing with the classical notion of syntactic parameters, the authors argue that language variation, like biodiversity, is the result of experience and thus not a part of the language faculty in the narrow sense. They also examine the nature of this core language faculty, the primary categories with which it is concerned, the operations it performs, the syntactic constraints it poses on semantic interpretation and the role of phases in bridging the gap between brain and syntax. Written in language accessible to a wide audience, The Biolinguistic Enterprise will appeal to scholars and students of linguistics, cognitive science, biology, and natural language processing.

Anna Maria Di Sciullo is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Quebec in Montreal and the director of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative on Interface Asymmetries. She held visiting positions at MIT and at the University of Venice. She is the author of Asymmetry in Morphology (2005), UG and External Systems (2005), Asymmetry in Grammar (2003), Projections and Interface Conditions: Essays on Modularity (1997), and co-authored with Edwin Williams On the Definition of Word (1987). She is the founder of the International Network on Biolinguistics. Cedric Boeckx is Research Professor at the Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies (ICREA), and a member of the Center for Theoretical Linguistics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Most recently he was Associate Professor of Linguistics at Harvard University. He is the author of Islands and Chains (2003), Linguistic Minimalism (2006), Understanding Minimalist Syntax (2007), Bare Syntax (2008), and Language in Cognition (2009); and the founding co-editor, with Kleanthes K. Grohmann, of the Open Access journal Biolinguistics.

1. Introduction: Contours of the Biolinguistic Research Agenda ; PART ONE: EVOLUTION ; 2. The Biolinguistic Program: The Current State of its Evolution ; 3. Some Reflections on Darwin's Problem in the Context of Cartesian Biolinguistics ; 4. Syntax Facit Saltum Redux: Biolinguistics and the Leap to Syntax ; 5. A Geneticist's Dream, a Linguist's Nightmare: The Case of FOXP2 ; 6. Biolinguistic Investigations: Genetics and Dynamics ; 7. "Deep Homology" in the Biology and Evolution of Language ; PART TWO: VARIATION ; 8. The Three factors in Evolution and variation ; 9. Three Factors in Language Variation ; 10. Approaching Parameters from Below ; 11. (Bio)linguistic Diversity ; 12. The Biolinguistic Program and historical Reconstruction ; 13. A Biolinguistic Approach to Variation ; PART THREE: COMPUTATION ; 14. Antisymmetry and the Lexicon ; 15. What Kind of Computing Device is the Human Language Faculty? ; 16. Clauses, Propositions, and Phases ; 17. Reflections on the Optimal Solution: On the Syntactic Representation of Indexicality ; 18. Emergence of a Systemic Semantics Through Minimal and underspecified Codes ; 19. Bridging the Gap Between Brain and Syntax. A Case for a Role of the Phonological Loop ; 20. All you Need is Merge: Biology, Computation, and language from the Bottom-up ; References ; Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	17.3.2011
Reihe/Serie	Oxford Studies in Biolinguistics
Zusatzinfo	Line drawings,
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	155 x 238 mm
Gewicht	1018 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeine Psychologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Verhaltenstherapie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Evolution
ISBN-10	0-19-955327-0 / 0199553270
ISBN-13	978-0-19-955327-3 / 9780199553273
Zustand	Neuware