Title: “The Boundaries of Babel: Notes Between the Brain and Syntax”
Abstract:
One of the major discoveries of modern linguistics is that
languages cannot vary unboundedly: every grammar must
meet some universal principles which generate an enormous
but not infinite number of combinations in a modular way. The
system is so complex that this underlying uniformity has
escaped the attention of scholars for centuries. Only formal
grammars have been able to arrive at this discovery in the last
fifty years of research. A crucial question that naturally arises
from this state of affairs is whether the limit of variation among
grammars is accidental or biologically driven. Recent
methodologies that allow us to explore the functioning of the
brain in vivo have allowed us to approach this question in a
new way. By testing the acquisition of artificial languages which
violate the universal principles of grammar it has been possible
to provide strong evidence in favour of a biological perspective
to the mystery of the absence of entire classes of conceivable
grammars.
grammars.
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