O'Donnell Timothy J, Hauser Marc D, Fitch W Tecumseh
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Harvard University, William James Hall 1052, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Jun;9(6):284-9. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.011.
Understanding developmental and evolutionary aspects of the language faculty requires comparing adult languages users' abilities with those of non-verbal subjects, such as babies and non-human animals. Classically, comparative work in this area has relied on the rich theoretical frameworks developed by linguists in the generative grammar tradition. However, the great variety of generative theories and the fact that they are models of language specifically makes it difficult to know what to test in animals and children lacking the expressive abilities of normal, mature adults. We suggest that this problem can be mitigated by tapping equally rich, but more formal mathematical approaches to language.
要理解语言官能的发育和进化方面，需要将成年语言使用者的能力与非语言主体（如婴儿和非人类动物）的能力进行比较。传统上，该领域的比较研究依赖于生成语法传统中语言学家所发展的丰富理论框架。然而，生成理论种类繁多，且它们是专门针对语言的模型，这使得很难确定在缺乏正常成熟成年人表达能力的动物和儿童身上测试什么。我们认为，可以通过采用同样丰富但更形式化的语言数学方法来缓解这个问题。
