Why and how the problem of the evolution of universal grammar (UG) is hard

Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (5):524-525 (2008)
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Abstract

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) suggest that language is an organism, like us, and that our brains were not selected for Universal Grammar (UG) capacity; rather, languages were selected for learnability with minimal trial-and-error experience by our brains. This explanation is circular: Where did our brain's selective capacity to learn all and only UG-compliant languages come from?

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10.1017/s0140525x08005153

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Stevan Harnad
McGill University

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