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Topic: Polemics
The Fitch, Hauser and Chomsky versus Jackendoff and Pinker Polemic
The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?
By Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky & W. Tecumseh Fitch
We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB)and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-intentional system, and the computational mechanisms for recursion, providing the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements. We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations).
Appeared in SCIENCE VOL 298, 22 NOVEMBER 2002
See also
The Faculty of Language: What's Special about it?
THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE FACULTY: CLARIFICATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Formal grammar and information theory: together again?
The Nature of the Language Faculty and its Implications for Evolution of Language
THREE FACTORS IN LANGUAGE DESIGN
The Fodor-Pinker Debate
Non-genomic nativism
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 00:01 BST
Updated: Friday, 9 September 2005 07:32 BST
