Language Architecture and Its Import for Evolution
Robert C. Berwick, Noam Chomsky · The MIT Press eBooks · 2016
This chapter discusses language architecture and its significance for evolution. It first considers the problem of the evolution of language, along with the Basic Property of human language, the theory of an internal or I-language, and Universal Grammar (UG). It then explores the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT) and the prehistory of the contemporary study of the evolution of language before turning to the view that language is fundamentally a system of thought and that the mental operations involving language should be independent of order, which is a reflex of the sensorimotor system. It also examines the notion that the basic principles of language are extremely simple, perhaps even optimal for computational systems, and that language is well designed for computational efficiency and expression of thought, but poses problems for use, particularly for communication.