Ceaseless, Unpredictable Creativity: Language as Technology

Abstract: Notions like ‘biolinguistics’ have a trivial and a non-trivial interpretation. According to the trivial version, a cultural phenomenon like language is only based on our innate biological capacities. Language, in this view, is not a matter of biology per se but of applied biology, i.e. a form of technology. Under this interpretation, ‘biolinguistics’ is uncontroversial and trivial because all our cultural activities are grounded in our biology. According to the non-trivial interpretation, the concept of language can be sufficiently narrowly construed so that we can define a core capacity that is comparable to a biological organ (like the heart or the liver). Recently, it has become common to see this ‘faculty of language in the narrow sense’ (FLN) as some abstract form of syntax characterized by recursive Merge. According to this article, only the trivial interpretation of ‘biolinguistics’ is correct. It does not make sense to define language in such a way that it excludes words. W.... https://bioling.psychopen.eu/index.php/bioling/article/view/8683

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Ceaseless, Unpredictable Creativity: Language as Technology ; volume:3 ; number:1 ; day:06 ; month:04 ; year:2009 ; Biolinguistics ; 3, Heft 1 (06.04.2009)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Koster, Jan

Further information

• DOI: 10.5964/bioling.8683
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2022110709260233550073
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:31 AM CEST