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The explanatory advantages of the holistic protolanguage model: The case of linguistic irregularity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2005

Alison Wray
Alison Wray*
Affiliation:
Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 3XB, Wales, United Kingdomhttp://www.cf.ac.uk/encap/staff/wray.html
*
wraya@cf.ac.uk
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Abstract:

Our tolerance for, and promotion of, linguistic irregularity is a key arbitrator between Arbib's proposal that holistic protolanguage preceded culturally imposed compositionality, and the standard view that discrete units with word-like properties came first. The former, coupled with needs-only analysis, neatly accounts for the second-order linguistic complexity that is rationalised as fuzzy grammaticality, subclass exception, and full irregularity.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , April 2005 , pp. 147 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

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References

Notes

1. This position easily supports Arbib's hypothesis (sect. 1.2) that there would be an extralinguistic human correlate of the primate mirror system for subcortical reflex vocalisations.

2. It was on the basis of this evidence that I first proposed a holistic protolanguage (Wray 1998; 2000; 2002b), but we avoid circularity since Arbib does not in any sense build his own story upon my proposal, he only cites it as an independently developed account consistent with his own.