Minimalism in the Light of Biology: What to Retain and What to Discard?

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Ljiljana Progovac¹ 

[1] Linguistics Program, Department of English, Wayne State University, United States

关键词: minimalism;    language evolution;    move;    subjacency;    recursion;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01303

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

This volume, and in general this moment in the history of science, is calling for us linguists, andespecially those of us who have worked in Minimalism, to characterize what it is that our approachhas discovered, that we want to embrace and move forward with, and what it is that we need todiscard. There is plenty in both categories, and it is precisely the considerations of biology (e.g.,language evolution) that can help us weed out the burdensome, damaging aspects of this approach.Too often we linguists look down upon the study of language evolution as some kind of marginaltopic that need not concern “true” linguists, and we prefer to just wait until geneticists, biologists,and neuroscientists figure it all out. And yet, it is only linguists who can put forward specific,linguistically informed hypotheses that can be subjected to interdisciplinary testing. The emphasishere is on specific, falsifiable hypotheses, rather than some vague assertions that cannot be subjectedto falsification. It is true that many such specific hypotheses will be proven wrong, but after all, thenature of the scientific process is simply to narrow down the range of possibilities.My focus here is on a few influential assumptions/postulates in Minimalism that are particularlyharmful in establishing meaningful links between language and biology, and which, both on thisground, and based on more careful linguistic considerations, should be abandoned. I will also pointto certain postulates that are worth keeping and moving forward with, based on their usefulnessfor biological considerations. Needless to say, this short Opinion piece is not a comprehensivereview of Minimalism, but is rather meant to provoke a substantive discussion about how to betterconstrain this framework, and how to, at the same time, make it better compatible with gradualistevolutionary considerations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY