IV. Biological and evolutionary perspectives on language

Tu. 30.11

Evolution of language.

Pinker, Steven and Paul Bloom. 1990. Natural Language and Natural Selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13:707-727.

Th. 2.10

Learnability and the poverty-of-the stimulus argument: some empirical results.

• G. Pullum & B. Scholz, Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments (TLR 19.9-50, 2002, J. Fodor & C. Crowther, Understanding stimulus poverty arguments. (TLR 19.105-145, 2002.

• Congenital language deficits. Gopnik, M. and Crago, M. 1991. Familial aggregation of a developmental language disorder. Cognition 39.1-50. Elizabeth Bates, Modularity, Domain Specificity and the Development of Language. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/$\sim$harnad/ Papers/Py104/bates-1994.html.

• The bioprogram: evidence from pidgins and creoles? Bickerton and his critics.

• ``Idiots savants''. Smith, N.V. 1995. The mind of a savant: language-learning and modularity.