Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T08:55:16.402Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Universals in cognitive theories of language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Paul Smolensky  and
Emmanuel Dupoux
Paul Smolensky
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218-2685. [email protected]://www.cogsci.jhu.edu/faculty/smolensky.html
Emmanuel Dupoux
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 75005 Paris, France. [email protected]://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux.html
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Generative linguistics' search for linguistic universals (1) is not comparable to the vague explanatory suggestions of the article; (2) clearly merits a more central place than linguistic typology in cognitive science; (3) is fundamentally untouched by the article's empirical arguments; (4) best explains the important facts of linguistic diversity; and (5) illuminates the dominant component of language's “biocultural” nature: biology.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 5 , October 2009 , pp. 468 - 469
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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.)

References

Grimshaw, J. & Samek-Lodovici, V. (1998) Optimal subjects and subject universals. In: Is the best good enough? Optimality and competition in syntax, ed. Barbosa, P., Fox, D., Hagstrom, P., McGinnis, M. & Pesetsky, D., pp. 193–219. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. J. (1982/1998) Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. Garland. (Doctoral dissertation of 1982; published by Garland in 1988).Google Scholar
Legendre, G., Smolensky, P. & Wilson, C. (1998) When is less more? Faithfulness and minimal links in wh-chains. In: Is the best good enough? Optimality and competition in syntax, ed. Barbosa, P., Fox, D., Hagstrom, P., McGinnis, M. & Pesetsky, D., pp. 249–89. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lenneberg, E. H. (1964) The capacity for language acquisition. In: The structure of language, ed. Fodor, J. A. & Katz, J. J., pp. 579–603. Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Peperkamp, S., Le Calvez, R., Nadal, J. P. & Dupoux, E. (2006) The acquisition of allophonic rules: Statistical learning with linguistic constraints. Cognition 101(B):31–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (1997) Optimality: From neural networks to universal grammar. Science 275(5306):1604–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smolensky, P. & Legendre, G. (2006) The harmonic mind. vol. 2. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Soderstrom, M., Mathis, D. & Smolensky, P. (2006) Abstract genomic encoding of universal grammar in optimality theory. In: The harmonic mind, vol. 2, ed. Smolensky, P. & Legendre, G., pp. 403–71. MIT Press.Google Scholar