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Language evolution: Two tracks are not enough

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

A. Charles Catania
A. Charles Catania
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, MD 21250. [email protected]://www.umbc.edu/psyc/personal/catania/catanias.html
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Abstract

This commentary argues that Evans & Levinson (E&L) should expand their two-track model to a three-track model in which biological and cultural evolution interact with the evolution of an individual's language repertories in ontogeny. It also comments on the relevance of the argument from the poverty of the stimulus and offers a caveat, based on analogous issues in biology, on the metaphor of language as a container, whether of meanings or of other content.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 5 , October 2009 , pp. 451 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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