Of Minds and Language

OF MINDS AND LANGUAGE

A Dialogue with
Noam Chomsky in the
Basque Country

Edited by

Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini,
Juan Uriagereka, and
Pello Salaburu

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford
OX
2 6
DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
If furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries

Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

© 2009 editorial matter and organization Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini,
Juan Uriagereka, and Pello Salaburu
© 2009 the chapters their various authors

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Data available

Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

ISBN 978–0–19–954466–0

1  3  5  7  9  10  8  6  4  2

Foreword and Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

 

1  Introduction

Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Pello Salaburu, and Juan Uriagereka

PART 1: OVERTURES

2  Opening Remarks

Noam Chomsky

Discussion

3  The Nature of Merge: Consequences for Language, Mind, and Biology

Cedric Boeckx

Discussion

4  The Foundational Abstractions

C. R. Gallistel

Discussion

5  Evolingo: The Nature of The Language Faculty

Marc D. Hauser

Discussion

6  Pointers to a Biology Of Language?

Gabriel Dover

Discussion

7  Language in an Epigenetic Framework

Donata Vercelli

Discussion

8  Brain Wiring Optimization and Non-genomic Nativism

Christopher Cherniak

Discussion

PART 2: ON LANGUAGE

9  Hierarchy, Merge, and Truth

Wolfram Hinzen

Discussion

10  Two Interfaces

James Higginbotham

Discussion

11  Movement and Concepts of Locality

Luigi Rizzi

Discussion

12  Uninterpretable Features in Syntactic Evolution

Juan Uriagereka

Discussion

13  The Brain Differentiates Hierarchical and Probabilistic Grammars

Angela D. Friederici

Discussion

14 Round Table: Language Universals: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Cedric Boeckx

Janet Dean Fodor

Lila Gleitman

Luigi Rizzi

General Discussion

PART 3: ON ACQUISITION

15  Innate Learning and Beyond

Rochel Gelman

Discussion

16  The Learned Component of Language Learning

Lila Gleitman

Discussion

17  Syntax Acquisition: An Evaluation Measure After All?

Janet Dean Fodor

Discussion

18  Remarks on the Individual Basis for Linguistic Structures

Thomas G. Bever

PART 4: OPEN TALKS ON OPEN INQUIRIES

19  The Illusion of Biological Variation: A Minimalist Approach to the Mind

Marc D. Hauser

Discussion

20 What Is There in Universal Grammar? On Innate and Specific Aspects of Language

Itziar Laka

Discussion

21  Individual Differences in Foreign Sound Perception: Perceptual or Linguistic Difficulties?

Núria Sebastián-Gallés

Discussion

22 Language and the Brain

Angela D. Friederici

Discussion

23  Conclusion

Noam Chomsky

Discussion

References

Index

In mid-2004, the organizers of the Summer Courses at the University of the Basque Country (UBC), San Sebastián Campus, contacted me because they wanted to organize a special event in 2006 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of our summer program. Their idea was to arrange a conference in which Noam Chomsky would figure as the main speaker.

What immediately came to mind was the Royaumont debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, organized in October 1975 by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and published in a magnificent book (Piattelli-Palmarini 1980) that greatly influenced scholars at the UBC and helped to put linguistics on a new footing at the University, particularly in the Basque Philology department. A second Royaumont was naturally out of the question, since Jean Piaget was no longer with us and also because Chomsky's own theories had developed spectacularly since 1975, stimulating experts in other disciplines (cognitive science, biology, psychology, etc.) to join in contributing new tools to the study of human language. It seemed therefore like a wonderful opportunity to bring together scientists from various fields and give them the chance to discuss their findings and proposals at length with Noam Chomsky, in an open debate lasting several days. But in order for this to be possible, we would first have to convince Chomsky to come and take part.

Accordingly, I contacted Juan Uriagereka at the University of Maryland and told him my plan. Juan was instantly enthused by the idea and wanted to get started right away, so we talked to Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini about it and immediately set in motion all the machinery that an event of this nature requires. Noam agreed to the project, and all the persons whom we asked to participate gave us an immediate positive response. The result was a vibrant, fascinating week of work, thought, and discussion in San Sebastián, from June 19th–22nd, 2006. The sessions drew large audiences of scholars and students, as well as very ample coverage by the local and national news media. Chomsky himself was particularly engaged in the proceedings, never missed a single talk, and contributed at length to many of the discussions, as readers of this volume will see in the following pages, which contain the main contributions to that
week based on the edited transcripts of the talks and discussions of all the participants.

As is natural, a seminar of this kind could not have been organized without the participation of many people, or without extraordinary funding. In this regard, I would like to stress first what a pleasure it has been to work with Massimo and Juan. The harmony between us before, during, and after the Conference has been impressive and very gratifying. Equally impressive was the performance of the Summer Course staff, who worked overtime to make sure that everything went smoothly. Regarding funding, in addition to the usual sponsors of our Summer Courses, we were very fortunate to receive extraordinary contributions from the Basque Government Department of Culture, thanks to the commitment and support of Miren Azkarate, our Minister of Culture and a linguist by profession.

So the Conference week came and went, but the work of the organizers had to continue so that these pages could be published. We were greatly helped during this phase by all the authors, who quickly and generously revised their transcripts, and to M. Dean Johnson, who had done the transcribing and copy-edited the resulting manuscripts. Also in the name of my co-editors, Massimo and Juan, I wish to express our gratitude to Jerid Francom (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona) for an outstanding job in collating, unifying, checking, and formatting the bibliography and integrating the references with the body of the text, making it ready for publication. The result is the volume you now have in your hands – a book which we trust will be of maximum interest to readers from many fields hopefully for many years to come.

Pello Salaburu

Professor of Basque Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country

Former Rector of the University of the Basque Country