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How plausible is the motherese hypothesis?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2005

Paul Bouissac
Paul Bouissac*
Affiliation:
French Linguistics, University of Toronto-Victoria College, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1K7, Canadahttp://www.semioticon.com/Bouissac/Home.htm
*
[email protected]
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Abstract:

Falk's hypothesis is attractive and seems to be supported by data from primatology and language acquisition literature. However, this etiological narrative presents a fairly low degree of plausibility, the result of two epistemological fallacies: an implicit reliance on a unilinear model of causality and the explicit belief that ontogeny is homologous to phylogeny. Although this attempt to retrace the early emergence of prelinguistic capacities in hominins falls short of producing a compelling argument, it does call attention to an aspect of linguistic behavior which may indeed have evolved under the pressure of nurturing constraints.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , August 2004 , pp. 506 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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