Messeri, Lorenzo (2006) L’orientamento biologico della linguistica chomskiana. Grammatica Universale e dati sperimentali. Annali del Dipartimento di Filosofia XI(2005):pp. 227-274.

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Abstract

Chomskyan linguistics recently seems to let its goals become wider, from a pure formal field to biology and cognitive sciences, aiming to a foretold convergence between the Universal Grammar Theory (UG) and neurosciences. In this paper I try to make the point on how far this linguistics biological trend (Chomsky calls it biolinguistics) is going today. First I’m going to talk about the foundations of biolinguistics. Then I’ll shortly face some critics against Chomsky about rationalism, innateness and modularity of mind; two theories alternative to UG will be shown. Fifth and sixth paragraphs just talk about recent acquisitions on the biological foundations of language and about how the UG theory can be tested with new neuroscientific surveying techniques. The last paragraph contains some remarks on the future of biolinguistics.