A short history of biolinguistics

Ian Roberts
(igr20@cam.ac.uk)
 What is biolinguistics?
• “a biologically based natural science of
language and of its development in the
individual and the human species” (McGilvray
(2010))
 th
19 -century linguistics
• Above all concerned with establishing and
extending our understanding of historical
relations among languages (language families)
• “The hypotheses about the origin of language
would all disintegrate or at least take a
completely different form, if, instead of being
left to poetic fancy, they were based on
historical research” (F. Schlegel Über die
Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, 1808)
 Language as organism
• “Since language, in direct conjunction with
mental power, is a fully fashioned organism,
we can distinguish within it not only parts but
also laws of procedure” (Humboldt ([1836]
1903-36, vii, 98))
• Languages develop, progress, fade and die.
• Organism vs mechanism
 Schleicher (1862)
• Isolation > agglutination (“growth”)
• > inflection
• Later stages represent “decay” (sound change,
analogy)
“After Sapir (1921), Bloomfield (1933) and Pederson
(1931) the ‘ideologic’ philosophical-psychological-
typological-evolutionary orientation essentially
dropped out of the consciousness of
contemporary linguists” (Campbell & Poser
(2008:233))
 Darwin (1871)
• “some early progenitor of man probably used his voice
in .. singing .. This power would have been especially
exerted during the courtship of the sexes” (109)
• “as the voice was used more and more, the vocal
organs would have been strengthened and perfected
through the principles of the inherited effects of use”
(110)
• “we may confidently believe that the continued use
and advancement of this power would have reacted on
the mind itself, by enabling and encouraging it to carry
out long trains of thought” (110)
• See Fitch (2010:397-9, 470-4) for detailed overview.
 Chomsky (1965)
• “there is surely no reason today for taking
seriously a position that attributes a complex
human achievement entirely to months (or at
most years) of experience, rather than to
millions of years of evolution or to principles
of neural organisation that may be even more
deeply grounded in physical law” (p. 59)
 Lenneberg (1967)
The first fully systematic overview of
• Physiological
• Maturational (proposed critical period)
• Neurological
• Phylogenetic
• Genetic
• Ontogenetic/acquisitional
• Cognitive
aspects of language, informed by then-current
linguistic theory
 Twelve theses (Lenneberg
(1967:374f.))
(1) “Language is a manifestation of species-specific
cognitive propensities”
(2) “The cognitive function underlying language consists
of an adaptation of a ubiquitous process (among
vertebrates) of categorization and extraction of
similarities.”
(3) “Certain specializations in peripheral anatomy and
physiology account for some of the universal features
of natural languages, but the assumption of these
human peculiarities does not constitute an
explanation for the phylogenetic development of
language.”
 More theses
(4) “The biological properties of the human form
of cognition set strict limits to the range of
possibilities for variations in natural
languages.”
(5) “The implication of (1) and (2) is that
existence of our cognitive processes entials a
potential for language.”
(6) “The actualization process is not the same as
‘beginning to say things’.”
(7) “The maturation of cognitive processes
comes about through progressive
differentiation.”
(8) “The disequilibrium state called language-
readiness is of limited duration.”
(9) “The language potential and the latent
structure may be assumed to be replcated in
every human being.”
(10) “Because latent structure is replicated in every
child and because all languages must have an
inner form of an identical type .., every child is
may learn any language with equal ease.”
(11) “The raw material from an individual
synthesizes building blocks for his own language
development cannot be the cause of the
developing structure”
(12) “Social settings may be required as a trigger
that sets of a reaction”.
 Piattelli-Palmarini (1979, 1982)
• October 1975: the Centre royaumont pour une science
de l’homme organised a debate between Chomsky and
Piaget.
• Participants included Gregory Bateson, Guy Cellérier,
Jean-Pierre Changeux, Jerry Fodor, Barbel Inhelder,
Francois Jacob (Nobel Prize for Medicine 1965),
Jacques Mehler, Jacques Monod (Nobel Prize for
Medicine 1965), Seymour Papert, Jean Petitot,
Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, David Premack, Hilary
Putnam, Dan Sperber, Stephen Toulmin, etc.
• Palmarini volumes published the debates.
Biolinguistics and minimalist linguistic
theory (Chomsky (2005) and passim)
The Three Factors:
• The dedicated part of the genome: UG
• The environment: Primary Linguistic Data
• General principles of computation and
cognition
 The 3 Factors and Biolinguistics
• F1: how little is there in UG?
(theoretical/ontological parsimony,
phylogeny)
 F2: classical developmental psycholinguistics
 F3: almost certainly not a single thing:
neuro-/biological constraints
computational constraints
mathematical law
natural law
 F3
• The new domain, but little is clear
• Some traditional linguistic notions which could be
part of F3:
- markedness
- phonetics (in relation to phonology)
- Elsewhere/defaults (Panini)
- generalised quantification
- logical competence
- Gricean inferences regarding interlocutors