Discussion Details
| Title: | History of Biolinguistics |
| Submitter: | John Goldsmith |
| Description: | I’m interested in the changing alliances between linguistics and its sister
disciplines. The founders of the LSA made an effort to justify linguistics as a science with its own autonomous scientific method, distinct from that of psychology or sociology. In the late 1950s and through the 1960s, psychologists and linguists (both generative and non-) attempted to develop a scientific agenda by which generative grammar could serve as a model for the cognitive sciences---though the movement for cognitive sciences did not emerge until the mid-1970s, under the influence of funding from the Sloan Foundation. In recent years, there has been considerable discussion of the relationship of biology and linguistics, much of it under the rubric of “biolinguistics”. In some respects, this notion has deep roots: Norbert Wiener, for example, discussed the biological specificity of language for the human species in his classic book Cybernetics (1948). Another part of this prehistory is the curiously titled “Handbook of Biolinguistics” by Meader and Muyskens, published in 1950, which champions (as the authors put it) a modern science of biolinguistics, whose practioners “look upon language study…as a natural science, and hence regards language as an integrated group of biological processes….This group seeks an explanation of *all* language phenomena in the functional integration of tissue and environment. (p. 9)”. (Language is there considered a function of the human organism comparable to digestion and walking, by the way!) And we all know that Eric Lenneberg published in 1967 an influential book on the biological foundations of the language function. But having lived through the late 1960s (and later decades), it seems to me that there were vanishingly few serious efforts to link generative grammar to results or methods of biology during this period---quite unlike the situation linking linguistics and psychology, where students and faculty alike moved between psychology and linguistics rather easily. All of which leads me to my question: what is the modern history of the term “biolinguistics”? I’m interested in the rise of the term “biolinguistics” among those studying grammar. Before 2000, virtually every citation that I can find using the term “biolinguistics” involves efforts to understand language in ways that are either deeply skeptical with regard to traditional linguistic analysis, or just ignorant of them. There are exceptions, to be sure: neurolinguists inspired by Lenneberg, and David Lightfoot’s 1984 book subtitled, “Towards a biology of grammars,” and several items by Lyle Jenkins. My question is: can anyone help me find uses of the term “biolinguistics” by card-carrying linguists before 2000, other than the ones I mentioned? My thanks to you all – John Goldsmith |
| Date Posted: | 07-May-2007 |
| Linguistic Field(s): | General Linguistics |
| LL Issue: | 18.1379 |
| Posted: | 07-May-2007 |
