A SENSORIMOTOR CHARACTERISATION OF SYNTAX, AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR MODELS OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

@inproceedings{Knott2010ASC,
  title={A SENSORIMOTOR CHARACTERISATION OF SYNTAX, AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR MODELS OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION},
  author={Alistair Knott},
  year={2010}
}
  • A. Knott
  • Published 1 March 2010
  • Psychology, Linguistics
In this paper I consider the possibility that language is more strongly grounded in sensorimotor cognition than is normally assumed—a scenario which would be providential for language evolution theorists. I argue that the syntactic theory most compatible with this scenario, perhaps surprisingly, is generative grammar. I suggest that there may be a way of interpreting the syntactic structures posited in one theory of generative grammar (Minimalism) as descriptions of sensorimotor processing, and… 
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