Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T10:02:41.946Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A curiously ubiquitous articulatory movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 1998

Björn Lindblom
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 [email protected] www.ling.su.se/staff/lindblom/lindblom.html
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , August 1998 , pp. 521 - 522
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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.)