Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T08:07:51.755Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language evolution without evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2003

Derek Bickerton
Derek Bickerton*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822
*
bickertond@prodigy.net
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Jackendoff's major syntactic exemplar is deeply unrepresentative of most syntactic relations and operations. His treatment of language evolution is vulnerable to Occam's Razor, hypothesizing stages of dubious independence and unexplained adaptiveness, and effectively divorcing the evolution of language from other aspects of human evolution. In particular, it ignores connections between language and the massive discontinuities in human cognitive evolution.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 26 , Issue 6 , December 2003 , pp. 669 - 670
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)
Supplementary material: PDF

Download undefined(PDF)
PDF 663.1 KB