The Human Language Faculty: Genetically Determined? an Approach to Testable Hypotheses

摘要

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.