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A curiously ubiquitous articulatory movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 1998

Björn Lindblom
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm, Sweden, and Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1196 lindblom@ling.su.se www.ling.su.se/staff/lindblom/lindblom.html

Abstract

The frame/content theory justifiably makes tinkering an important explanatory principle. However, tinkering is linked to the accidental and, if completely decoupled from functional constraints, it could potentially play the role of an “idiosyncracy generator,” thus offering a sort of “evolutionary” alibi for the Chomskyan paradigm – the approach to language that MacNeilage most emphatically rejects. To block that line of reasoning, it should be made clear that evolutionary opportunism always operates within the constraints of selection.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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