The human language faculty: genetically determined? An approach to testable hypotheses.
A kind of generation gap seems to divide researchers interested in the evolutionary status of the human language capacity. There is still opposition to the theory of a genetically determined universal or primal grammar. But although not well acquainted with the transformational-generative linguistic methodology that led to the hypothesis, an increasing number of linguists base their work with a "new grammar" on the acceptance of innateness of the human language faculty. It is proposed that dyslexia offers a hypothesis testable with the new advanced gene mapping, and that Creole Languages and Sign Languages of the Deaf may come to offer possibilities of similarly testable hypotheses.
Hansen
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D005075:Biological Evolution; D005826:Genetics, Medical; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008957:Models, Genetic