marco@work - The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve? - Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky & W. Tecumseh Fitch

In The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve? door Marc D. Hauser, Noam Chomsky & W. Tecumseh Fitch wordt gesteld dat recursie de enige uniek menselijke component is. De auteurs zouden hiermee tevens het menselijk taalvermogen willen kunnen verklaren door te veronderstellen dat het ontstaan van recursie een evolutionaire stap is waarmee oorspronkelijk een niet-taalkundig opgelost kon worden, zoals bijvoorbeeld navigatie. Door te zoeken naar recursieve capaciteiten in dieren zou mogelijk ook de laatste vraag in de titel van dit artikel beantwoord kunnen worden...

Abstract:
"We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be pro.tably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB)and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-intentional system, and the computational mechanisms for recursion, providing the capacity to generate an in.nite range of expressions from a finite set of elements. We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations)."