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| Authoritative: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X08005153 (Publisher's PDF... likely be available here.) |
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Abstract
Christiansen & Chater (C&C) suggest that language is an organism, like us, and that our brains were not selected for Universal Grammar (UG) capacity; rather, languages were selected for learnability with minimal trial-and-error experience by our brains. This explanation is circular: Where did our brain's selective capacity to learn all and only UG-compliant languages come from?BibTex
@article{harnad08BBScomments,
author={Stevan Harnad},
title={Why and how the problem of the evolution of Universal Grammar (UG) is hard},
journal={Behavioral and Brain Sciences},
year={2008},
volume={31},
number={5},
pages={524-525},
doi={10.1017/S0140525X08005153},
url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/harnad08BBScomments.html}
}