Syntax, action, comparative cognitive science, and Darwinian thinking

摘要

In a recent exchange, Moro (2014) and Pulvermüller (2014) re-open a long-standing debate in the language sciences. Ever since the 1975 Royaumont encounter that set the agenda for linguistics and the classical cognitive sciences, generative linguists, whose ultimate goal we take to be to shed light on the biological basis for language, have rejected any attempt of a rapprochement between natural language syntax and action grammar (motor planning), even if the hierarchical structure of plans is well established in the literature (see already Miller et al., 1960). The parallelism between syntax and action grammar has enjoyed a new lease of life recently (Jackendoff, 2007; Fujita, 2009; Pulvermüller, 2010; Stout, 2010; Arbib, 2012; Knott, 2012), with neuroscientists like Pulvermüller ready to reap the fruits, but Moro reiterates the standard generative stance that the parallelism is at best a metaphor.