Berent Iris
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University.
Behav Brain Sci. 2009;32(5):450-451. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X09990628.
Evans and Levinson are right to hold theories of language accountable for language diversity, but typological data alone cannot determine the structure of mental phonological grammars. Grammatical universals are nonetheless testable by formal and experimental methods, and the growing research in experimental phonology demonstrates the viability of a comparative experimental evaluation of the UG hypothesis.
埃文斯和莱文森认为语言理论应对语言多样性负责,这是正确的,但仅类型学数据无法确定心理音系语法的结构。然而,语法普遍性可以通过形式和实验方法进行检验,并且实验音系学中不断增加的研究证明了对普遍语法假设进行比较实验评估的可行性。