Biolinguistics

Biolinguistics can be defined as the biological and evolutionary study of language. It is highly interdisciplinary as it draws from various fields such as sociobiology, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, mathematics, and neurolinguistics to elucidate the formation of language. It seeks to yield a framework by which one can understand the fundamentals of the faculty of language. This field was first introduced by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona. It was first introduced in 1971, at an international meeting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Biolinguistics, also called the biolinguistic enterprise or the biolinguistic approach, is believed to have its origins in Noam Chomsky's and Eric Lenneberg's work on language acquisition that began in the 1950s as a reaction to the then-dominant behaviorist paradigm. Fundamentally, biolinguistics challenges the view of human language acquisition as a behavior based on stimulus-response interactions and associations. Chomsky and Lenneberg militated against it by arguing for the innate knowledge of language. Chomsky in 1960s proposed the Language Acquisition Device as a hypothetical tool for language acquisition that only humans are born with. Similarly, Lenneberg formulated the Critical Period Hypothesis, the main idea of which being that language acquisition is biologically constrained. These works were regarded as pioneers in the shaping of biolinguistic thought, in what was the beginning of a change in paradigm in the study of language.

Origins of biolinguistics

The investigation of the biological foundations of language is associated with two historical periods, namely that of the 19th century and the 20th century with neuroscience.

19th century: Darwin's theory of evolution

inspired many researchers to study language, in particular the evolution of language, via the lens of biology. Darwin's theory regarding the origin of language attempts to answer three important questions:

Did individuals undergo something like selection as they evolved?
Did selection play a role in producing the capacity for language in humans?
If selection did play a role, was selection primarily responsible for the emergence of language, was it just one of the several contributing causes?

Dating back to 1821, German linguist August Schleicher was the representative pioneer of biolinguistics, discussing the evolution of language based on Darwin's theory of evolution. Since linguistics had been believed to be a form of historical science under the influence of the Société de Linguistique de Paris, speculations of the origin of language were not permitted. As a result, hardly did any prominent linguist write about the origin of language apart from German linguist Hugo Schuchardt. Darwinism addressed the arguments of other researchers and scholars much as Max Müller by arguing that language use, while requiring a certain mental capacity, also stimulates brain development, enabling long trains of thought and strengthening power. Darwin drew an extended analogy between the evolution of languages and species, noting in each domain the presence of rudiments, of crossing and blending, and variation, and remarking on how each development gradually through a process of struggle.

20th century: Biological foundation of language

The first phase in the development of biolinguistics runs through the late 1960s with the publication of Lennberg's Biological Foundation of Language. During the first phase, work focused on:

specifying the boundary conditions for human language as a system of cognition;
language development as it presents itself in the acquisition sequence that children go through when they learn a language
genetics of language disorders that create specific language disabilities, including dyslexia and deafness)
language evolution.

During this period, the greatest progress was made in coming to a better understanding of the defining properties of human language as a system of cognition. Three landmark events shaped the modern field of biolinguistics: two important conferences were convened in the 1970s, and a retrospective article was published in 1997 by Lyle Jenkins.

1974: The first official biolinguistic conference was organized by him in 1974, bringing together evolutionary biologists, neuroscientists, linguists, and others interested in the development of language in the individual, its origins and evolution.
1976: another conference was held by the New York Academy of Science, after which numerous works on the origin of language were published.
1997: For the 40th anniversary of transformational-generative grammar, wrote an article titled "Biolinguistics: Structure development and evolution of language".

The second phase began in the late 1970s. In 1976 Chomsky formulated the fundamental questions of biolinguistics as follows: i) function, ii) structure, iii) physical basis, iv) development in the individual, v) evolutionary development. In the late 1980s a great deal of progress was made in answering questions about the development of language. This then prompted further questions about language design, function, and, the evolution of language. The following year, Juan Uriagereka, a graduate student of Howard Lasnik, wrote the introductory text to Minimalist Syntax, Rhyme and Reason. Their work renewed interest in biolinguistics, catalysing many linguists to look into biolinguistics with their colleagues in adjacent scientific disciplines. Both Jenkins and Uriagereka stressed the importance of addressing the emergence of the language faculty in humans. At around the same time, geneticists discovered a link between the language deficit manifest by the KE family members and the gene FOXP2. Although FOXP2 is not the gene responsible for language, this discovery brought many linguists and scientists together to interpret this data, renewing the interest of biolinguistics.
Although many linguists have differing opinions when it comes to the history of biolinguistics, Chomsky believes that its history was simply that of transformational grammar. While Professor Anna Maria Di Sciullo claims that the interdisciplinary research of biology and linguistics in the 1950s-1960s led to the rise of biolinguistics. Furthermore, Jenkins believes that biolinguistics was the outcome of transformational grammarians studying human linguistic and biological mechanisms. On the other hand, linguists Martin Nowak and Charles Yang argue that biolinguistics, originating in the 1970s, is distinct transformational grammar; rather a new branch of the linguistics-biology research paradigm initiated by transformational grammar.

Developments

Chomsky's theories

Universal grammar and generative grammar

In Aspects of the theory of Syntax, Chomsky proposed that languages are the product of a biologically determined capacity present in all humans, located in the brain. He addresses three core questions of biolinguistics: what constitutes the knowledge of language, how is knowledge acquired, how is the knowledge put to use? A great deal of ours must be innate, supporting his claim with the fact that speakers are capable of producing and understanding novel sentences without explicit instructions.
Chomsky proposed that the form of the grammar may emerge from the mental structure afforded by the human brain and argued that formal grammatical categories such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives do not exist. The linguistic theory of generative grammar thereby proposes that sentences are generated by a subconscious set of procedures which are part of an individual's cognitive ability. These procedures are modeled through a set of formal grammatical rules which are thought to generate sentences in a language.
Chomsky focuses on the mind of the language learner or user and proposed that internal properties of the language faculty are closely linked to the physical biology of humans. He further introduced the idea of a universal grammar theorized to be inherent to all human beings. From the view of Biolinguistic approach, the process of language acquisition would be fast and smooth because humans naturally obtain the fundamental perceptions toward Universal Grammar, which is opposite to the usage-based approach. UG refers to the initial state of the faculty of language; a biologically innate organ that helps the learner make sense of the data and build up an internal grammar. The theory suggests that all human languages are subject to universal principles or parameters that allow for different choices. It also contends that humans possess generative grammar, which is hard-wired into the human brain in some ways and makes it possible for young children to do the rapid and universal acquisition of speech. Elements of linguistic variation then determine the growth of language in the individual, and variation is the result of experience, given the genetic endowment and independent principles reducing complexity. Chomsky's work is often recognized as the weak perspective of biolinguistics as it does not pull from other fields of study outside of linguistics.

Modularity Hypothesis

According to Chomsky, the human's brains consist of various sections which possess their individual functions, such as the language faculty, visual recognition.

Language Acquisition Device

The acquisition of language is a universal feat and it is believed we are all born with an innate structure initially proposed by Chomsky in the 1960s. The language acquisition device was presented as an innate structure in humans which enabled language learning. Individuals are thought to be "wired" with universal grammar rules enabling them to understand and evaluate complex syntactic structures. Proponents of the LAD often quote the argument of the poverty of negative stimulus, suggesting that children rely on the LAD to develop their knowledge of a language despite not being exposed to a rich linguistic environment. Later, Chomsky exchanged this notion instead for that of Universal Grammar, providing evidence for a biological basis of language.