The Primacy of Grammar

by Mukherji, Nirmalangshu

• ISBN13: 9780262014052
• ISBN10: 026201405X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-30
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

The contemporary discipline of biolinguistics is beginning to have the feel of scientific inquiry. Biolinguistics-especially the work of Noam Chomsky-suggests that the design of language may be "perfect": language is an optimal solution to conditions of sound and meaning. What is the scope of this inquiry? Which aspect of nature does this science investigate? What is its relation to the rest of science? What notions of language and mind are under investigation? This book is a study of such foundational questions. Exploring Chomsky's claims, Nirmalangshu Mukherji argues that the significance of biolinguistic inquiry extends beyond the domain of language. Biolinguistics is primarily concerned with grammars that represent just the computational aspects of the mind/brain. This restriction to grammars, Mukherji argues, opens the possibility that the computational system of human language may be involved in each cognitive system that requires similar computational resources. Deploying analytical argumentation and empirical evidence, Mukherji suggests that a computational system of language consisting of very specific principles and operations is likely to be involved in each articulatory symbol system-such as music-that manifests unboundedness. In that sense, the biolinguistics approach may have identified, after thousands of years of inquiry, a specific structure of the human mind. A Bradford Book

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xi
Abbreviations	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
The Loneliness of Biolinguistics	p. 1
Some Classical Issues	p. 2
Limits of Cognitive Inquiry	p. 4
Overview of Biolinguistics	p. 11
Linguistic Theory I	p. 29
Russell's Scope Problem	p. 30
Principles and Parameters	p. 35
Government-Binding Theory	p. 37
Grammar and Scope Problem	p. 66
Grammar and Logic	p. 73
Chinese Room	p. 74
PFR and SFR	p. 75
LF and Logical Form	p. 83
Truth and Meaning	p. 87
Limits of Formal Semantics	p. 95
Summing Up	p. 115
Words and Concepts	p. 119
öIncompletenessö of Grammar	p. 119
Lexical Data	p. 124
Lexical Decomposition	p. 134
Crossroads	p. 156
Linguistic Theory II	p. 161
Minimalist Program	p. 162
CHL and Linguistic Specificity	p. 179
Language and Music	p. 189
Musilanguage Hypothesis	p. 189
Strong Musilanguage Hypothesis	p. 197
A Joint of Nature	p. 215
Merge and Music	p. 216
Faculty of Music	p. 222
öLaws of Natureö	p. 229
Notes	p. 243
References	p. 253
Index	p. 271
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