Benítez-Burraco Antonio, Boeckx Cedric
Department of Spanish Philology and its Didactics, University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain.
Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) & Department of Linguistics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Biol Theory. 2014;9(2):122-134. doi: 10.1007/s13752-014-0164-0. Epub 2014 Mar 15.
Recent advances in genetics and neurobiology have greatly increased the degree of variation that one finds in what is taken to provide the biological foundations of our species-specific linguistic capacities. In particular, this variation seems to cast doubt on the purportedly homogeneous nature of the language faculty traditionally captured by the concept of "Universal Grammar." In this article we discuss what this new source of diversity reveals about the biological reality underlying Universal Grammar. Our discussion leads us to support (1) certain hypotheses advanced in evolutionary developmental biology that argue for the existence of robust biological mechanisms capable of canalizing variation at different levels, and (2) a bottom-up perspective on comparative cognition. We conclude by sketching future directions for what we call "comparative biolinguistics," specifying which experimental directions may help us succeed in this new research avenue.
遗传学和神经生物学的最新进展极大地增加了人们在被认为构成我们物种特定语言能力生物学基础的方面所发现的变异程度。特别是，这种变异似乎对传统上由“普遍语法”概念所捕捉的语言官能据称的同质性本质提出了质疑。在本文中，我们讨论了这种新的多样性来源揭示了关于普遍语法背后的生物学现实的哪些内容。我们的讨论使我们支持：（1）进化发育生物学中提出的某些假说，这些假说主张存在能够在不同层面引导变异的强大生物学机制；（2）对比较认知的自下而上的观点。我们通过勾勒我们所谓的“比较生物语言学”的未来方向来得出结论，具体说明哪些实验方向可能有助于我们在这条新的研究途径上取得成功。
