Related links

Web search: Google Web Search   ::   Google Scholar

Abstract

Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (HCF) proposed that recursion is the only thing that distinguishes language (a) from other human capacities, and (b) from the capacities of animals. These factors are independent. The narrow faculty of language might include more than recursion, falsifying (a). Or it might consist only of recursion, although parts of the broad faculty might be uniquely human as well, falsifying (b). This chapter presents a view that is contrasted with HCF's above. It shows that there is considerably more of language that is special, though still a plausible product of the processes of evolution. It assesses the key bodies of evidence, coming to a different reading from HCF's. The chapter organizes the discussion by distinguishing the conceptual, sensorimotor, and specifically linguistic aspects of the broad language faculty in turn.

Keywords: language universal; syntax; language faculty; Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch; linguistics; recursion; speech perception; phonology; speech production

@incollection{pinker09LUchapter,
  author={Steven Pinker and Ray Jackendoff},
  title={The Components of Language: What's Specific to Language, and What's Specific to Humans},
  year={2009},
  pages={126-152},
  chapter={7},
  editor={M.H. Christiansen and C. Collins and S. Edelman},
  publisher={Oxford University Press},
  booktitle={Language Universals},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/pinker09LUchapter.html},
  keywords={language universal; syntax; language faculty; Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch; linguistics; recursion; speech perception; phonology; speech production}
}