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Pro and con: Internal speech and the evolution of complex language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2016

Christina Behme
Christina Behme*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada. christinabehme@gmail.com
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Abstract

The target article by Christiansen & Chater (C&C) offers an integrated framework for the study of language acquisition and, possibly, a novel role for internal speech in language acquisition. However, the “Now-or-Never bottleneck” raises a paradox for language evolution. It seems to imply that language complexity has been either reduced over time or has remained the same. How, then, could languages as complex as ours have evolved in prelinguistic ancestors? Linguistic Platonism could offer a solution to this paradox.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e65
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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