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Universal Grammar (universal + grammar)
Selected AbstractsFunctional Neuroimaging Studies of Syntactic Processing in Sentence Comprehension: A Critical Selective ReviewLINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1-2 2007David Caplan This article critically reviews recent papers that use functional neuroimaging to localize syntactic representations, Universal Grammar, parsing operations, and the working memory system that supports parsing. It is concluded that greater control over experimental conditions is needed for studies to provide convincing evidence about the neural basis for these cognitive functions. [source] Physiological Linguistics, and Some Implications Regarding Disciplinary Autonomy and UnificationMIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 1 2007SAMUEL D. EPSTEIN At least current irreducibility of biology, including biolinguistics, stems in at least some cases from the very nature of what I will claim is physiological, or inter-organ/inter-component, macro-levels of explanation which play a new and central explanatory role in Chomsky's inter-componential (interface-based) explanation of certain (anatomical) properties of the syntactic component of Universal Grammar. Under this new mode of explanation, certain physiological functions of cognitive mental organs are hypothesized, in an attempt to explain aspects of their internal anatomy. Thus, the internal anatomy of the syntactic component exhibits features that enable it to effectively interface with (i.e. function in a coordinated fashion with) other ,adjacent' organs, such as the Conceptual-Intensional (C-I) (,meaning') system and the Sensory- Motor (SM) (,sound') system. These two interface systems take as their inputs the assembled outputs of the syntactic component and, as a result of the very syntactic structure imposed by the syntax (as opposed to countless imaginable alternatives) are then able to assign their (linearized) sound and (compositional) meaning interpretations. If this is an accurate characterization, Chomsky's long-standing postulation of mental organs, and I will argue, the advancement of new hypotheses concerning physiological inter-organ functions, has attained in current biolinguistic Minimalist method a significant unification with foundational aspects of physiological explanation in other areas of biology. [source] The Motor Core of Speech: A Comparison of Serial Organization Patterns in Infants and LanguagesCHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2000Peter F. MacNeilage Comparison of serial organization of infant babbling and early speech with that of 10 languages reveals four movement-related design features reflecting a deep evolutionary heritage: (1) the cyclical consonant,vowel alternation underlying the syllable, a "Frame" for speech consisting of mandibular oscillation, possibly evolving from ingestive cyclicities (e.g., chewing) via visuofacial communicative cyclicities (e.g., lipsmacks); (2) three intracyclical consonant,vowel co-occurrence preferences reflecting basic biomechanical constraints , coronal consonants,front vowels, dorsal consonants,back vowels, and labial consonants,central vowels; (3) a developmental progression from above-chance to below-chance levels of intercyclical consonant repetition; (4) an ease-related labial consonant,vowel, coronal consonant sequence preference for word initiation. These design features presumably result from self-organizational responses to selection pressures, primarily determined by motor factors. No explanation for these design features is available from Universal Grammar, and, except for feature 3, perceptual-motor learning seems to have only a limited causal role in acquisition of any design feature. [source] Adaptationism for Human Cognition: Strong, Spurious or Weak?MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 1 2005Scott Atran This strategy seems best when there is evidence of homology. Weak adaptationists don't assume that complex organic (including cognitive and linguistic) functioning necessarily or primarily represents task-specific adaptation. This approach to cognition resembles physicists' attempts to deductively explain the most facts with fewest hypotheses. For certain domain-specific competencies (folkbiology) strong adaptationism is useful but not necessary to research. With group-level belief systems (religion) strong adaptationism degenerates into spurious notions of social function and cultural selection. In other cases (language, especially universal grammar) weak adaptationism's ,minimalist' approach seems productive. [source] Modeling the Development of Children's Use of Optional Infinitives in Dutch and English Using MOSAICCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 2 2006Daniel Freudenthal Abstract In this study we use a computational model of language learning called model of syntax acquisition in children (MOSAIC) to investigate the extent to which the optional infinitive (OI) phenomenon in Dutch and English can be explained in terms of a resource-limited distributional analysis of Dutch and English child-directed speech. The results show that the same version of MOSAIC is able to simulate changes in the pattern of finiteness marking in 2 children learning Dutch and 2 children learning English as the average length of their utterances increases. These results suggest that it is possible to explain the key features of the OI phenomenon in both Dutch and English in terms of the interaction between an utterance-final bias in learning and the distributional characteristics of child-directed speech in the 2 languages. They also show how computational modeling techniques can be used to investigate the extent to which cross-linguistic similarities in the developmental data can be explained in terms of common processing constraints as opposed to innate knowledge of universal grammar. [source] | |||||||||||||