Talk:Biolinguistics

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 9 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lindsay20001202.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:02, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
1. It would be better if contents are reorganized. 2. Neurolinguistics, Typology, and Artificial grammar learning might be relevant to this article, but it seems that they need clearer links to biolinguistics. 3. Syntax part seems to be redundant... 4. In "Critiques," I think some discussions on modularity are needed. 5. References need to be checked (e.g., footnote 7 Jenkins (1997), "Web Journal of Formal, Computational and Cognitive Linguistics" - one of my classmates indicated this) Ninackjeong (talk) 05:19, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

added some details of language faculty in a minimalist approach / added a link for footnote7 Ninackjeong (talk) 05:19, 5 November 2019 (UTC) added 3 components of language faculty in a minimalist approach that will be updated, added a relevant citation for it (Di Sciullo et al., 2010). Ninackjeong (talk) 07:27, 1 November 2019 (UTC) added Tomasello (2005) to the language acquisition section / (suggestion) "Syntax" section might be redundant. "Neurolinguistics" needs a little bit clearer connections too biolinguistics. "Typology" is somewhat pertinent to biolinguistics, but needs more information. Ninackjeong (talk) 06:50, 1 November 2019 (UTC) elaborated on some sentences, tried to keep the neutral tone / (question) I am wondering what "the rapid and universal acquisition of speech" means. Shouldn't it be language? Since this is not very clear to me, I leave the expression as it is. Ninackjeong (talk) 06:11, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

reorganized origins section, added relevant citations, delete one sentence that talked about the lack of works on biolinguistics from ~? to 1975 because in around 1970s, the interest in the origin of language revived and therefore such information might be a little bit confusing... Ninackjeong (talk) 02:31, 1 November 2019 (UTC) added more information on the main difference between the behaviorist's approach of language acquisition and Chomsky's and Lenneberg's ideas. need to trim the reference part. Ninackjeong (talk) 09:31, 25 October 2019 (UTC) added Massimo's picture Ninackjeong (talk) 05:03, 25 October 2019 (UTC) added Boeckx and Berlinski to "People in biolinguistics" / revised some expressions in the leading paragraph / I am also planning to add some mind-related stuff soon. Ninackjeong (talk) 04:55, 25 October 2019 (UTC) added a relevant citation for FOXP2 part / added Massimo to "People in biolinguistics" Ninackjeong (talk) 06:45, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Needs more detail and references Fahmed16 (talk) 02:43, 7 March 2017 (UTC) Question

What do Fibonacci sequences and the Golden Mean have to do with anything?

Answer

Extract from: Carnie, Medeiros. "Tree Maximization and the Generalized Extended Projection". Coyote Working Papers 14, University of Arizona

....."At the same time, important work in the philosophical foundations of Minimalism has suggested that universal syntactic principles, in particular those governing the simple, mathematical computational system, should follow from general physical principles that govern the way biological systems emerge in the phenotype. For example, Uriagereka (1997) has claimed that linguistic structures exhibit the mathematical properties of the “Golden Mean” as exhibited, for example, in the Fibonacci Sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc). In this speculative squib, we observe that one particular Fibonacci-like sequence in tree structures which are maximized in terms of specifiers and complements might explain why languages aim towards filled specifiers as stipulated by the generalized EPP.".....

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 11 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ninackjeong. Peer reviewers: AVCharles1138, RemoLing.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

To Geoffrey Sampson
You are saying: 'Ordinary speakers regularly do say things which the nativists claim nobody ever says, and systematically fail to say things which the nativists claim people often say. In speaking the way they find natural, the population at large blows the nativist case to pieces.'

Comment:

One MUST NOT forget about a distinction between linguistic performance, people's speech actions, and linguistic competence - the knowledge a grammar exemplified in those speech actions. The proper object of Chomskyan linguistics is competence and not performance, and its highest aim is the modelling of linguistic competence - something which is mentally represented. Performance is a different kind of study and, second, performance is the reflection of not just one but at least several competences. The explanation of variation in any given speech action will have to incorporate numerous - psychological, social, etc. - causes. No wonder people 'fail to say things' that belong in the domain of competence, not performance. -- Biolinguist (talk) 15:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

POV tag
This concerns POV tag cleanup. Whenever an POV tag is placed, it is necessary to also post a message in the discussion section stating clearly why it is thought the article does not comply with POV guidelines, and suggestions for how to improve it. This permits discussion and consensus among editors. From WP tag policy: '''Drive-by tagging is strongly discouraged. The editor who adds the tag must address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies, namely Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Simply being of the opinion that a page is not neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort.''' Better yet, edit the topic yourself with the improvements. This statement is not a judgement of content, it is only a cleanup of frivolously and/or arbitrarily placed tags. No discussion, no tag.Jjdon (talk) 21:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Right now there are at least three obvious reasons for a POV tag here: a) the section on minimalism is compeltely POV, grossly exaggerates the achievements and influence of the program and reads more like an advertisement for MIT and Chomsky; b) this article seems to assume that MIT/Chomskian Generativism is the only current in Biolinguistics and completely ignores all other theories; c) No empirical sudies are mentioned. This is an article on "opinions"... If nobody objects, I'll restore the tag until these issues are resolved.201.21.68.17 (talk) 03:46, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with your tagging. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 03:50, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I am a linguist writing from MIT, the very belly of the beast you might think, to ask that you please not read this page as an advertisement for MIT or a description of the research we actually do here. The day we can actually do something that deserves the name "biolinguistics" will be a great day indeed, but that day has not arrived (and no one here is doing Fibonacci linguistics). So the tagging seems appropriate even from my "Chomskyan" perspective.18.100.8.88 (talk) 19:16, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

David Poeppel
Shouldn't David Poeppel be removed from the People In Biolinguistics list, since he has rejected the Biolinguistics program? Wiki nikk (talk) 14:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)Wiki nikk

ways to improve the article
This article is in a parlous state. 1) Is there an expert who can rewrite the article to make it understandable to non-minimalist linguists (or even to non-linguists)? Terms like 'external merge' and 'internal merge' won't be understood outside minimalist circles. The section entitled 'Developments' will only be understood by people who already understand what it describes. 2) This article was clearly written by people who, by dint of sheer ignorance, believe that biolinguistics is only done within minimalism. What about Talmy Givon's book "Bio-Linguistics; the Santa Barbara Lectures"? Or what about work other people in the last few decades who have been trying to reduce linguistic phenomena to biological phenomena, and who thought that the modularity hypothesis was an obstacle to this (say Cognitive Grammarians, various other functionalists)? As it stands, the article will harm the reputation of minimalism by confirming the suspicion that minimalists ignore other theories.

I second that
I agree with the above note. Unfortunately, Chomskyan linguists have strengthened their reputation for insularity by calling a purely minimalist theory of the biology and evolution of language "biolinguistics". Here are my suggestions for improvement, which I'd be happy to do someday assuming no one complains:

1) minimalist biolinguistics (and this is usually what is meant these days by the term, I think) should be treated separately from other biologically-oriented theories of language, and it needs to be clearly and immediately identified as something coming from one particular linguistic theory among many. Not acknowledging such things is a very bad habit that some linguists have fallen into, unfortunately. Minimalist biolinguistics should be treated separately both to avoid confusion and because it is indeed radically different from any other research in this area that I am aware of.

2) Now that I re-read it, the whole thing is written in an oddly effusive style which is inappropriate for an encyclopedia entry, both for style and POV reasons. I suppose the whole thing should really be extensively re-written.

3) Other "biological" theories of language, including the views and very important research of Philip Lieberman, for instance, should get some treatment here. The EvoLang conference should be mentioned. There should at least be links to neurological stuff, etc. I can write that part, I suppose. Oh, and this needs to link to the evolutionary linguistics page. On the other hand, and I think this is probably the best idea, this page can be renamed "Biolinguistics (Minimalist Program)" or something along those lines, and other research into the biology of language can have its own article, perhaps with a disambiguation page.

I'm not sure when I would have the time to make some of these changes. I would suggest that what is there now is really not worth keeping, and it might be better to erase most of it and leave it as a stub until someone gets around to editing it. AlanHogue (talk) 22:40, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:08, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

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Question
Where did you find the information linking biolinguistics to the minimalist program? I always thought that was an accusation on the part of Pinker, not a proven fact, but if you have citations for that I'd love to see them. Ejohnso9 (talk) 19:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Question
In the "Hypothesis" section, the paragraph is mostly a close paraphrase of the paper that is cited. While this is certainly a sound perspective to be included in the page, perhaps the format could be rephrased to be more suitable for a Wiki article? --The Philosopher John Locke (talk) 04:58, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Stylistic editing/ content organization: Origins, developments and critiques
Myself and a a few other linguistic classmates will be going over Origins, developments and the critiques sections in the Biolinguistics page. Our main focus will be on stylistics editing on what is currently on the page to make this article more understandable for individuals who are non-minimalist linguists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KRlinguist (talk • contribs) 21:35, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Adding information
KRlinguist (talk) 22:37, 16 April 2020 (UTC)Hi all, I will be making to edits on the relevance of Natural Law and in the Minimalist Program section in the next little bit. I will try to make the information as clear and concise that is easy enough for non-linguists to understand. KRlinguist (talk) 22:37, 16 April 2020 (UTC) Any input of feedback is much appreciated.

What does biolinguistics challenge
In the intro paragraph there's mention that biolinguistics challenges human language acquisition as a behavior based approach. I plan on elaborating this is a new section towards the end of the paper. I think this will be useful for non-linguists to get an understanding of the other view of language acquisition. I will specifically focus on the Usage based Approach. KRlinguist (talk) 23:54, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Reformatting of "Other relevant fields"
Though these topics are valuable, it seems like they are explained in too much detail for a page dedicated to biolinguistics. I hope to condense this information into a table that will have a short summary of each topic as well as possible research questions within biolinguistics; links to each page will still be provided in case the reader wishes to learn more. Murdoch.thecat (talk) 03:00, 19 April 2020 (UTC)Murdoch.thecat

Minimalist Program and Relevance of Natural Law
I plan on further elaborating on the concept of merge and how it we can think of it here and its importance. I will be moving Relevanve of Nat. Law below MP as it will flow better given that MERGE is a concept that both tough on the subject KRlinguist (talk) 22:53, 21 April 2020 (UTC) sources will be cited as necessary

Stylistic edits and Adding information: Human vs. Animal communication
I intend to do as the previous suggestions advise; i) simplify the information for non-linguists, ii) remove/re phrase any information that does not seem fit to the specific relevant of biolinguistics, and iii) add additional information. Areas that are specifically related to the goals of i) and ii) are removing the section of Darwinism that appears in developments, and condensing it to origins. Although this information is valuable, it is not the most significant piece of information relating to biolinguistics and additional information on that topic can be found on that page, not this one. I plan on adding information regarding the differences between human and animal communication as this is evidence for the bio linguistic perspective.

New content on "Integration Hypothesis"
Over the next few weeks, new content will be added on the Integration Hypothesis by myself as well as two of my class colleagues for a project that we are working on. The content that will be added includes discussions about what the Integration Hypothesis is (the E component + the L component), how we see the application of this hypothesis with simple sentences in English as well as compound words in non-English languages, the origins of the E and L components found in the the animal world (specifically in the communication systems of birds and non-human primates), and lastly the rapid emergence perspective of the emergence of human language. Thank you so much for your patience as we work on incrementally developing this portion of the Biolinguistics page!

Nehamultani (talk) 06:45, 17 November 2020 (UTC)