Abstract: This chapter explores relationship between thought and language calling in question arguments and grounds that make or add on to the perception of language as cognitive system. This relationship can be studied through two approaches: "rational nativism" and "massive modularity." They discus language "peripheral" restricted purely for communicative dimension. The intuitive cases presented in this chapter, therefore, cast doubt on the general picture of linguistic communication as the means of conveying the contents of thoughts to audiences. The chapter aims at depicting shortcomings of peripheral view of language with a fair assessment of evidence. There are several aspects of this idea that deserve comment; it is this power for innovation, for cultural evolution, which gives the human mind its aura of evolutionary uniqueness. It is only the human species that presents such a great range of variability, flexibility, and capacity for innovation, which gives rise to cultural knowledge and its intergenerational transmission. Since cultural process happens faster than biological evolution, the idea propagated in this chapter is of rejecting a universal psychological design of language and to clear the space for a more concrete one.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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