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Language : - Wiki: A language is a dynamic set of visual, auditory, or tactile symbols of communication and the elements used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon. Language is considered to be an exclusively human mode of communication; although animals make use of quite sophisticated communicative systems, none of these are known to make use of all of the properties that linguists use to define language.
Linguistics: Modern theoretical linguistics gained prominence with the work of Noam Chomsky[1] who developed Generative Grammar and Universal Grammar. These theories are chiefly concerned with explaining how human beings acquire language and the biological constraints on this acquisition, and are modularist in character. Other linguistic theories (Cognitive linguistics being a prominent example) approach these questions differently. There are also many sub-fields in linguistics, which may or may not be dominated by a particular theoretical approach: Evolutionary linguistics, for example, attempts to account for the origins of language; historical linguistics explores language change; and sociolinguistics looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures.
Linguists - Names:
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky has argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from an "innate" Universal grammar, which is common to all languages. Proponents of generative grammar have argued that most grammar is not the result of communicative function and is not simply learned from the environment.
Tecumseh Fitch: Fitch-links
Mark Hauser: The Cognitive Evolution Laboratory: CEL
Ray Jackendoff: home: http://ase.tufts.edu/philosophy/people/jackendoff.shtml
His central research is on the semantics of natural language, how it relates to human conceptualization, and how it is expressed linguistically. In the course of working out the foundations for this enterprise, he has been drawn into research on visual cognition, music cognition, social cognition, consciousness, and the evolution of the language capacity, as well as more traditional issues for linguists such as syntax and the lexicon.
Gary Lupyan: home - My main interests revolve around the interaction between language and other cognitive processes: How does language change the way we categorize and perceive the world? What non-communicative aspects of human behavior are impaired in cases of acquired language deficits such as aphasia? What kinds of thinking depends most on language? Asked another way: what aspects of human cognition were made possible or improved with the evolution of language? An additional interest of mine is trying to understand why language is the way it is by analyzing sociolinguistic factors. For example, how do languages vary as a function of whether they are used by a diverse population that includes adult learners of the language, or in a tightly-knit small group in which the language is acquired exclusively as a native language by infants. Lupyan-Abstracts
Steven Pinker: papers:http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/research/selected_theoretical_papers.html
James R. Hurford: The Language Mosaic and its Evolution
Language Evolution: Edited by Morten H. Christiansen Simon Kirby
Oxford University Press 2003
Introduction: It is natural to ask fact-demanding questions about the evolution of language, such as 'Did Homo erectus use syntactic language? ‘When did relative clauses appear?' and 'What language was spoken by the first Homo sapiens sapiens who migrated out of Africa?
One function of science is to satisfy a thirst for such answers to questions comprehensible in everyday terms, summarized as 'What happened, and when?' Such questions are clearly genuinely empirical; there is (or was) a fact of the matter. A time‑travelling investigator could do fieldwork among the Homo erectus and research the first question, and then make forward jumps in time and research the other questions. I believe, however, that study in the evolution of language will not yield answers to such questions in the near future. Therefore, finding answers to such empirical‑in‑principle questions cannot be the purpose of language evolution research. The goal is, rather, to explain the present.
Michael Tomasello: Exerpts of books - Tomasello
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Linguistics - Ideas:
Generative Grammar
Universal Grammar
competence and performance
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: The hypothesis postulates that a particular language's nature influences the habitual thought of its speakers: that different language patterns yield different patterns of thought. This idea challenges the possibility of perfectly representing the world with language, because it implies that the mechanisms of any language condition the thoughts of its speaker community. The hypothesis emerges in strong and weak formulations.
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Language Evolution
Language Evolution Texts
Origin of Language
Language Evolution Ideas 2008
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