Sunday, April 17, 2011

Linguistics: Culture More Important for Language Development than Linguistic Rules

Amina Khan at the Los Angeles Times reports on research in linguistics that Culture trumps biology in language development:
"Researchers construct evolutionary trees for four linguistic groups and conclude that cultures, not innate preferences, drive the language rules humans create – contrary to the findings of noted linguists Noam Chomsky and Joseph Greenberg."
The lesson here for linguists is that foolish consistencies are the hobgoblin of....

Read the full article.