Biolinguistics (E-Journal)
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Linguistics and Some Aspects of Its Underlying Dynamics
No full textIn recent years, central components of a new approach to linguistics, the Minimalist Program, have come closer to physics. In this paper, an interesting and productive isomorphism is established between minimalist structure, algebraic structures, and many-body field theory opening new avenues of inquiry on the dynamics underlying some central aspects of linguistics. Features such as the unconstrained nature of recursive Merge, the difference between pronounced and un-pronounced copies of elements in a sentence, and the Fibonacci sequence in the syntactic derivation of sentence structures, are shown to be accessible to representation in terms of algebraic formalism
Should It Stay or Should It Go? A Critical Reflection on the Critical Period for Language
No full textThis paper tries to shed light on traditional and current observations that give support to the idea that language is subject to critical period effects. It is suggested that this idea is not adequately grounded on a view on language as a developmental phenomenon which motivates the suggestion of moving from the now classic concept of language as a ‘faculty’ to a new concept of language as a ‘gradient’: i.e. an aggregate of cognitive abilities, the weight of which is variable from one to another developmental stage, and which exercise crucial scaffolding effects on each other. Once this well-supported view is assumed, the idea of ‘critical period’ becomes an avoidable one, for language can instantiate different forms of gradation, none of which is inherently normal or deviant relatively to each other. In any event, a notion of ‘criticality’ is retained within this view, yet simply to name the transitional effects of scaffolding influences within the gradient
X-within-X Structures and the Nature of Categories
No full textThis paper discusses the existence of X-within-X structures in language. Constraints to same-category embedding have been the focus in a number of recent studies. These studies follow a long-standing tradition in linguistic theory that assumes a ban on the adjacency of same-category elements. In the present work, data drawn from a typologically broad variety of languages suggest that the postulated constraints are not so robust. It is shown that X-within-X structures do exist in language. In this context, an argument is made in favor of an unrestricted conceptualization of Merge, independent from category distributions, while recursion is taken to be a property of procedures and not of structures. The discussion of X-within-X patterns provides insights with respect to the attested category distributions, the nature of categories, and the language faculty, from a biologically plausible point of view
Locality in Language and Locality in Brain Oscillatory Structures
No full textFrom the perspective of brain oscillations, an explanation is offered as to why external systems of language cannot deal with identical categorial elements in certain local domains. An equivalent locality effect in brain structure is argued for which causes a (cognitively problematic and ambiguous) synchronization of rhythms in the gamma, beta1, and beta2 bands. These rhythms can be related to different categories, and their limited patterns and interactions may explain syntactic constraints on phrases, phases, and Internal Merge
Why the Left Hemisphere Is Dominant for Speech Production: Connecting the Dots
No full textEvidence from seemingly disparate areas of speech/language research is reviewed to form a unified theoretical account for why the left hemisphere is specialized for speech production. Research findings from studies investigating hemispheric lateralization of infant babbling, the primacy of the syllable in phonological structure, rhyming performance in split-brain patients, rhyming ability and phonetic categorization in children diagnosed with developmental apraxia of speech, rules governing exchange errors in spoonerisms, organizational principles of neocortical control of learned motor behaviors, and multi-electrode recordings of human neuronal responses to speech sounds are described and common threads highlighted. It is suggested that the emergence, in developmental neurogenesis, of a hard-wired, syllabically-organized, neural substrate representing the phonemic sound elements of one’s language, particularly the vocalic nucleus, is the crucial factor underlying the left hemisphere’s dominance for speech production
