Abstract
Biolinguistic minimalism seeks a deeper explanation of the design, development and evolution of human language by reducing its core domain to the bare minimum including the set-formation operation Merge. In an attempt to open an avenue of research that may lead to an evolutionarily adequate theory of language, this article makes the following proposals: (i) Merge is the elementary combinatorial device that requires no more decomposition; (ii) the precursor to Merge may be found in the uniquely human capacity for hierarchical object manipulation; (iii) the uniqueness of the human lexicon may also be captured in terms of Merge. Empirical validations of these proposals should constitute one major topic for the biolinguistic program.
Highlights
Biolinguistic minimalism seeks a deeper explanation of the design, development and evolution of human language by reducing its core domain to the bare minimum including the set-formation operation Merge
It is natural to assume that the evolution of these three systems predated the emergence of language, that they had, if any, separate original functions whose connection with language was thin, and that language suddenly appeared as a result of their integration within the human brain, dated about 50,000-200,000 years ago, when the pre-existing SM and conceptual– intentional (C–I) capacities were mediated by the so far isolated computational system of syntax
The fact that there is at least one language that utilizes Pot-Merge but not Sub-Merge for compounding, can be understood as an indication that the latter type is computationally more complex, probably echoing the species-specificity of the Subassembly strategy in Action Grammar: After all, it is the last strategy to emerge in child development
Summary
This article is based on my presentation at the BALE 2008 conference as well as on many other occasions including the following: the 8th Annual Meeting of the Society of Evolutionary Studies, Japan (August 2006), the 8th Annual International Conference of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences (June 2006), and the 23rd National Conference of the English Linguistic Society of Japan (November 2005). It is natural to assume that the evolution of these three systems predated the emergence of language, that they had, if any, separate original functions whose connection with language was thin, and that language suddenly appeared as a result of their integration within the human brain, dated about 50,000-200,000 years ago, when the pre-existing SM and C–I capacities were mediated by the so far isolated computational system of syntax. As is often the case with theoretical studies of language evolution, much of the following arguments have to remain speculative It is worth noting, that descriptive linguistic research sometimes sheds light on the core property of HFL and on its origins and evolution. Evolutionary adequacy on one hand and explanatory and descriptive adequacy on the other are not two separate goals but are tightly interconnected and should be pursued in parallel
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