Friday, May 13, 2011

Flip the Chomsky Switch

On April 14, 2011 the Los Angeles Times published an article about recent research in the field of linguistics titled "Culture trumps biology in language development, study argues." Here is the lede:

"Researchers construct evolutionary trees for four linguistic groups and conclude that cultures, not innate preferences, drive the language rules humans create – contrary to the findings of noted linguists Noam Chomsky and Joseph Greenberg."


On April 19, 2011 Voxy Blog published the following infographic.


Via: Voxy Blog

Coincidence? I think not.

4 comments:

mandarinis said...

Chomsky's theory is not clear enough for me yet (I'm a first/second year student, teacher training in English), so i'd like to know how accurate this all is.
There are a couple comments after the article in disagreement and some linguists seem to disagree with this investigation as well (it's 'quoted' in the end of it)... so i don't know where to stand here! I need more guidence :)

MGN said...

I prefere Construction grammar...

Laura Payne said...

mandarinis - Linguists are famous for disagreeing. Wish I could give you more guidance, but I am not sure either.

Laura Payne said...

MatiasG - I am not familiar with Construction Grammar. I will have to check it out. Thanks for sharing.

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