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Language as ergonomic perfection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini ,
Roeland Hancock  and
Thomas Bever
Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721massimo@u.arizona.eduhttp://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~massimo/
Roeland Hancock
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. rhancock@u.arizona.edutgb@u.arizona.eduhttp://www.ic.arizona.edu/~psylin/bever.html
Thomas Bever
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721massimo@u.arizona.eduhttp://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~massimo/
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Abstract

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) have taken the interactionist approach to linguistic universals to an extreme, adopting the metaphor of language as an organism. This metaphor adds no insights to five decades of analyzing language universals as the result of interaction of linguistically unique and general cognitive systems. This metaphor is also based on an outmoded view of classical Darwinian evolution and has no clear basis in biology or cognition.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 5 , October 2008 , pp. 530 - 531
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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