Edelman (1992: 126):
Speech is special and unique to Homo sapiens. Can we account for its evolutionary emergence without creating a gulf between linguistic theory and biology? Yes, provided that we account for speech in epigenetic as well as genetic terms. This means abandoning any notion of a genetically programmed language-acquisition device. It does not mean, however, that specialised heritable structures were not necessary for speech to arise. Indeed, the evidence for the existence of specialised heritable structures related to speech is not hard to find.
Blogger Comments:
The notion of a genetically programmed language-acquisition device is the sine qua non of Chomskyan Formal Linguistics, a theory couched in terms of Platonic Essentialism and the Cartesian res cogitans.
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