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13 results

  • 17 - The Golden Phrase: Steps to the Physics of Language

  • from Part III - Linguistics and Other Sciences
  • Edited by Ángel J. Gallego, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Roger Martin, Yokohama National University, Japan
  • Book: Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences
  • Published online: 02 October 2018
  • Print publication: 18 October 2018, pp 333-350

  • Summary

    Noam Chomsky has suggested that the human language capacity may be “something like a snowflake, taking the form it does by virtue of natural law”(Chomsky 2011: 26). Inspired by his suggestion, this chapter considers syntactic patterns themselves as something like crystal lattices. We formalize different iterable syntactic configurations (self-similar patterns of Merge) as matrices, and examine their spectrum of eigenvalues. We identify three desirable eigenspectrum properties, motivated by comparisons with physics, as well as theory-internal considerations, that seem likely to be significant for syntactic forms. We observe that the format corresponding to the familiar X-bar schema, intimately related to the Fibonacci numbers, is uniquely special: Among all possible organizations, it is the only one with all three desirable properties.We speculate that this convergence of appealing mathematics might make X-bar-like phrase structure an attractor for linguistic expressions, even if Merge (the basic combinatory operation) is, in principle, free. Elsewhere in nature, in-principle-free growth processes frequently fall into self-similar patterns, with a special role for Fibonacci-related forms. We suggest that the recursive nature of syntax, whereby intermediate stages of growth set the conditions for subsequent growth, makes self-organization along these lines plausible.

  • 3 - Biolinguistics yesterday, today, and tomorrow

  • Edited by Cedric Boeckx, Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus
  • Book: The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics
  • Published online: 05 May 2013
  • Print publication: 14 February 2013, pp 12-21

  • Summary

    In the mid 1970s, biology was starting an exploration of the regulatory mechanisms that determine the activation and inactivation of genes. The study of language pathologies, notably aphasia, became increasingly relevant and researchers with a solid background in linguistic theory started having a closer look. Early studies in language acquisition contributed to divorce the spontaneous growth of language in the child from any kind of inductive trial-and-error mechanism. Evidence from different sources had converged onto a better picture of modularity, maturation, and the poverty of the stimulus. The increasing success of evo-devo suggests entirely new ways of looking at the evolutionary relation between genes, mostly paying attention to regulatory genes, across species and phyla. Speaking of future generations, when hopefully biolinguistics will turn into a domain such that BS or BA majors will exist in some universities, the chapter indulges in designing a curriculum, in broad terms.

  • 10 - What is language, that it may have evolved, and what is evolution, that it may apply to language

  • Edited by Richard K. Larson, State University of New York, Stony Brook, Viviane Déprez, Rutgers University, New Jersey, Hiroko Yamakido, Lawrence University, Wisconsin
  • Book: The Evolution of Human Language
  • Published online: 05 June 2012
  • Print publication: 07 January 2010, pp 148-162

  • Summary

    Linguistics and biology are both witnessing such a rapid and ground-breaking progress that I think it wise to step back a moment and reconsider the very issue of the evolution of language at its roots. I wish to start with two real-life parables, drawing some important lessons from each. The first is from physics, the second from biology.

    Parable 1. The Italian physicist Gabriele Veneziano is acknowledged to have been the first inventor/discoverer of the core idea behind string theory. Veneziano had not realized, back in 1968, where his idea was leading. Initially, his “dual resonance models” were only an elegant way of summarizing several apparently scattered facts and hypotheses and of solving some inconsistencies of the standard theory. In the fullness of time, it turned out that the consequence of that initial idea, and of the mathematical formalism used to express it, was that the world of elementary particles is the projection onto our four-dimensional space of modes of vibration and oscillation of microscopic uni-dimensional strings in a space with eleven dimensions. String theory is, for the moment at least, so many steps removed from experimental observation that its partial success has to be gauged by indirect confirmation of some of its secondary predictions. This is, understandably, far from deterring physicists, and work in string theory is in full swing.

  • Language as ergonomic perfection

  • Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Roeland Hancock, Thomas Bever
  • Journal: Behavioral and Brain Sciences / Volume 31 / Issue 5 / October 2008
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2008, pp. 530-531

  • 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.

  • Broca's aphasia, Broca's area, and syntax: A complex relationship

  • Stefano F. Cappa, Andrea Moro, Daniela Perani, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
  • Journal: Behavioral and Brain Sciences / Volume 23 / Issue 1 / February 2000
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2001, pp. 27-28

  • Three types of problems are raised in this commentary: On the linguistic side, we emphasize the importance of an appropriate definition of the different domains of linguistics. This is needed to define the domains (lexicon-syntax-semantics) to which transformational relations apply. We then question the concept of Broca's aphasia as a “functional” syndrome, associated with a specific lesion. Finally, we discuss evidence from functional brain imaging. The breadth and potential impact of such evidence has grown considerably in the last few years, expanding our knowledge of the multiple contributions of the “Broca's region” to phonological, lexical-semantic, and syntactic processing. “Lumping” under diagnostic labels, such as Broca's aphasia, should be replaced by more detailed linguistic and neurological descriptions of the clinical cases.