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Language evolution without evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2003

Derek Bickerton
Derek Bickerton*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822
*
[email protected]
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Abstract:

Jackendoff's major syntactic exemplar is deeply unrepresentative of most syntactic relations and operations. His treatment of language evolution is vulnerable to Occam's Razor, hypothesizing stages of dubious independence and unexplained adaptiveness, and effectively divorcing the evolution of language from other aspects of human evolution. In particular, it ignores connections between language and the massive discontinuities in human cognitive evolution.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 26 , Issue 6 , December 2003 , pp. 669 - 670
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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