This paper contends that the specificity of biolinguistics as a academic (sub)discipline does not rely on the specificity of its subject matter, which it shares with linguistics at large, but on the ...specificity of the theoretical manipulations that biolinguistics needs to apply to such a matter in order to accommodate it to the concerns that it shares with biology. The paper also defends that in fulfilling this aim bioliguistics is required to direct itself as a branch of learning with a great capacity of interdisciplinary synthesis. The point is illustrated with the particular case of solving the continuity problem.
This study builds on the hypothesis put forth in Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco (2014), according to which the developmental changes expressed at the levels of brain morphology and neural connectivity ...that resulted in a more globular braincase in our species were crucial to understand the origins of our language-ready brain. Specifically, this paper explores the links between two well-known 'language-related' genes like FOXP2 and ROBO1 implicated in vocal learning and the initial set of genes of interest put forth in Boeckx and Benítez-B urraco (2014), with RUNX2 as focal point. Relying on the existing literature, we uncover potential molecular links that could be of interest to future experimental inquiries into the biological foundations of language and the testing of our initial hypothesis. Our discussion could also be relevant for clinical linguistics and for the interpretation of results from paleogenomics.
This study builds on the hypothesis put forth in Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco (2014), according to which the developmental changes expressed at the levels of brain morphology and neural connectivity ...that resulted in a more globular braincase in our species were crucial to understand the origins of our language-ready brain. Specifically, this paper explores the links between two well-known 'language-related' genes like FOXP2 and ROBO1 implicated in vocal learning and the initial set of genes of interest put forth in Boeckx and Benítez-B urraco (2014), with RUNX2 as focal point. Relying on the existing literature, we uncover potential molecular links that could be of interest to future experimental inquiries into the biological foundations of language and the testing of our initial hypothesis. Our discussion could also be relevant for clinical linguistics and for the interpretation of results from paleogenomics.
Drawing on linguistic and biocultural anthropological perspectives on embodiment, this paper advances a “biolinguistic” approach to ethnographic research on intimacy, attending simultaneously to the ...co‐constitutive interactive, psychophysiological, and phenomenological processes that emerge in everyday embodied interaction between long‐term, cohabitating romantic partners. Through concurrent attention to natural interactions captured during video ethnography and moment‐to‐moment shifts in heart‐rate variability, this study complements and complicates existing psychological, communication, and anthropological research on intimacy. Three case‐studies of long‐term couples residing in the Southeastern United States demonstrate how neither pure psychophysiology nor pure linguistic analysis fully encapsulates potential patterns of intimacy among them. Rather, this microanalytical, biolinguistic approach to the complexities of body and language interplay, in treating embodiment and interaction as bidirectional phenomena, emphasizes that meanings and enactments of intimacy might look different for each couple and can change over time in complex ways that index couples’ enduring orientations towards various cultural and relational norms.
Sobre mentes e linguagem Chomsky, Noam
Revista virtual de estudos da linguagem,
09/2018, Letnik:
16, Številka:
31
Journal Article
Este artigo analisa e repensa alguns dos principais temas do programa biolinguístico desde a sua criação, no início dos anos 1950, influenciados, a cada estágio, pelos desenvolvimentos nas ciências ...biológicas. O texto também discute como as questões que entram agora na agenda de pesquisa se desenvolvem de maneira natural a partir de algumas das primeiras preocupações dessas investigações.Texto traduzido do original de 2007, “Of minds and language”, publicado na primeira edição do hoje influente periódico Biolinguistics.
W artykule poruszającym problem różnych obliczy komunikacji wyeksponowano biologiczne i semiotyczne wymiary zjawisk komunikacyjnych. Za cel obrano, między innymi, biosemiotyczną reinterpretację kilku ...kluczowych terminów klasycznej teorii informacji i komunikacji, w szczególności relacji między komunikacją komplikacji i komplikacją komunikacji, jakie obserwuje się w odmiennych sposobach porozumiewania się ludzi i (innych) zwierząt. Sformułowano tezę, zgodnie z którą zdolności i umiejętności biokomunikacyjne zwierząt ludzkich i nie-ludzkich dzieli dystans zarazem ilościowy i jakościowy. Celem artykułu jest odsłonięcie biologicznych podstaw semiotycznych zjawisk (w wymiarach: pragmatycznym, semantycznym, syntaktycznym i diakrytycznym). W związku z tym w pracy wiwisekcji zostają poddane wybrane strukturalne i funkcjonalne aspekty fenomenu biokomunikacji.
Formal Syntax and Deep History Ceolin, Andrea; Guardiano, Cristina; Irimia, Monica Alexandrina ...
Frontiers in psychology,
12/2020, Letnik:
11
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We show that, contrary to long-standing assumptions, syntactic traits, modeled here within the generative biolinguistic framework, provide insights into deep-time language history. To support this ...claim, we have encoded the diversity of nominal structures using 94 universally definable binary parameters, set in 69 languages spanning across up to 13 traditionally irreducible Eurasian families. We found a phylogenetic signal that distinguishes all such families and matches the family-internal tree topologies that are safely established through classical etymological methods and datasets. We have retrieved "near-perfect" phylogenies, which are essentially immune to homoplastic disruption and only moderately influenced by horizontal convergence, two factors that instead severely affect more externalized linguistic features, like sound inventories. This result allows us to draw some preliminary inferences about plausible/implausible cross-family classifications; it also provides a new source of evidence for testing the representation of diversity in syntactic theories.
Language acquisition from a biolinguistic perspective Crain, Stephen; Koring, Loes; Thornton, Rosalind
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews,
October 2017, 2017-Oct, 2017-10-00, 20171001, Letnik:
81, Številka:
Pt B
Journal Article
Recenzirano
•This paper compares a biolinguistic approach to language acquisition and a usage-based approach.•We demonstrate that the biolinguistic approach is both descriptively and explanatorily more ...adequate.•The experimental findings show that children amalgamate superficially different linguistic phenomena.•These findings are predicted on the biolinguistic approach, but resist explanation on the usage-based approach.
This paper describes the biolinguistic approach to language acquisition. We contrast the biolinguistic approach with a usage-based approach. We argue that the biolinguistic approach is superior because it provides more accurate and more extensive generalizations about the properties of human languages, as well as a better account of how children acquire human languages. To distinguish between these accounts, we focus on how child and adult language differ both in sentence production and in sentence understanding. We argue that the observed differences resist explanation using the cognitive mechanisms that are invoked by the usage-based approach. In contrast, the biolinguistic approach explains the qualitative parametric differences between child and adult language. Explaining how child and adult language differ and demonstrating that children perceive unity despite apparent diversity are two of the hallmarks of the biolinguistic approach to language acquisition.
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