Chomsky on Why Only Us

If you attended any of Chomsky's recent presentations on language, you probably heard him joke about the pile of books on the origin of language despite the fact that almost nothing is known about the subject. So I was surprised to see that 2016 has begun with the launching of a book about the evolution of language (Why Only Us: language and evolution) written by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky. Fans of generative grammar need not worry, however, for nothing has changed and there is nothing new here. Chomsky still says that language consists of a process, called Merge, of sticking concepts together. This process still began with one mutation that occurred between 60 and 200 thousand years ago. Later on Merge was hooked up to an externalization system that allows us to speak, or sign, or touch (as in braile), or see (writing). Any other possibilities are still dismissed as incoherent. The theory was first described on this blog 8 years ago and, if Chomsky has changed, it is only to grow more confident. Oh, he does say that the old belief that he was dismissive of evolution was an error, not a misunderstanding on the part of others: an error, perhaps even a lie. The boom that followed Pinker and Bloom's 1990 paper was literally much ado about nothing. For those readers who are not already familiar with the Chomsky theory, the key paragraph is to be found on page 87: In some completely unknown way, our ancestors developed human concepts. At some time in the recent past, a...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Source Type: blogs