Book contents
- Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences
- Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I The Computational Component
- Part II Interfaces
- 7 Linearizing Chains at LF
- 8 On the Rationality of Grammar
- 9 The Warped Forge
- 10 Limiting Semantic Types
- 11 Why Is Phonology Different? No Recursion
- 12 Nothing in Syntax Makes Sense Except in the Light of Change
- 13 Neurology and Experience: The Language Organ and Externalization
- Part III Linguistics and Other Sciences
- Index
- References
13 - Neurology and Experience: The Language Organ and Externalization
from Part II - Interfaces
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2018
Book contents
- Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences
- Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I The Computational Component
- Part II Interfaces
- 7 Linearizing Chains at LF
- 8 On the Rationality of Grammar
- 9 The Warped Forge
- 10 Limiting Semantic Types
- 11 Why Is Phonology Different? No Recursion
- 12 Nothing in Syntax Makes Sense Except in the Light of Change
- 13 Neurology and Experience: The Language Organ and Externalization
- Part III Linguistics and Other Sciences
- Index
- References
Summary
In the study of human speech, as in the study of birdsong, it is arguably crucial to distinguish what is innate from what is learned. Human newborns are equipped with all the brain power needed to speak one or more human languages. Their respective language organs are biologically given in essence (hence universal), while the particular grammar they grow in the first years of life from hearing the language spoken around them is, to a considerable extent, a historically evolving subsystem, under the weight of the past like other cultural systems. A crucial part of this growth is the memorization of the vocabulary of at least one language spoken by the fellow humans the infant hear speak day after day. If they grow up in a modern industrialized community, they are likely to eventually have larger vocabularies than infants who grow up in less industrialized ones, but the underlying structure of their respective languages is essentially the same, needless to say. Taking this observations as a point of departure, this paper argues that a psychoneurological theory of human language structure must mirror this essential property by placing the insertion of vocabulary items of each particular language grown in the mind of an infant, in their ultimate morphological forms, into the abstract phrase-marker generated by the syntax , thus at the end of the derivation of a sentence, after all the purely syntactic rules have applied. It goes on to argue that properties of a vocabulary have a bearing on the range of possibilities open to their speakers by examining three of Shakespeare’s sonnets and one of their Spanish translations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences , pp. 241 - 266Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
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