Language: UG or not to be, that is the question

Johan J Bolhuis; Ian Tattersall; Noam Chomsky; Robert C Berwick

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002063

Language: UG or not to be, that is the question

PLoS Biol. 2015 Feb 13;13(2):e1002063. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002063. eCollection 2015 Feb.

Authors

Johan J Bolhuis¹, Ian Tattersall², Noam Chomsky³, Robert C Berwick⁴

Affiliations

¹ Cognitive Neurobiology and Helmholtz Institute, Departments of Psychology and Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Department of Zoology and Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
² Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, United States of America.
³ Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
⁴ Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.

Abstract

Language is not the same as speech or communication; rather, it is a computational cognitive system. It has appeared very recently, consistent with a minimalist view of language's hierarchical syntactic structure.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Comment

MeSH terms

Biological Evolution*
Humans
Language*

Grants and funding

JJB is funded by Utrecht University and by Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) grants (ALW Open Competition and NWO Gravity and Horizon Programmes) (http://www.nwo.nl/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.