Description :
Acquisition of language is a human biological endowment, and we know children have a natural disposition for mastering it. The biological side of language is the subject of increasing research. Biolinguists are interested in fundamental questions such as, whether speech and language are localized in the brain, how do encoding and decoding of speech and language function, and whether different components of language (syntax, phonology, semantics) are neuroanatomically distinct. Biolinguistics studies, the relationship between brain function and language. In other words, it is primarily concerned with grammars that represent the computational aspects of the mind/brain.
This book elegantly introduces the subject of biolinguistics. The author provides a lucid overview of Chomsky’s contribution in biolinguistics and builds on it to offer a novel account of the nature of the human faculty of language. Hence, apart from topics internal to biolinguistics, this work touches on topics in the history and philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and psychology of music, among others. In this content, the biolinguistic approach may ultimately lead to identification of a specific structure of mind.
The book is eminently suitable for courses offered in the departments of Linguistics/Computational Linguistics, Philosophy, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Languages at research level.
Content :
List of Figures. Abbreviations. Preface. The Loneliness of Biolinguistics. Linguistic Theory I. Grammar and Logic. Words and Concepts. Linguistic Theory II. Language and Music. A Joint of Nature. Notes. References. Index
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