TITLE:
Language Evolution in Biolinguistics from a Multi-Factor Perspective
AUTHORS:
Zhenyi Shao
KEYWORDS:
Language Evolution, Language Properties, Language Faculty, Biolinguistics, Uniqueness
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.6 No.11,
November
7,
2019
ABSTRACT: Biolinguistics is an interdisciplinary subject derived from the interaction of biology and linguistics. In 1967, after the publication of Biological Foundations of Language by Lenneberg E.H., the vision of Language study has been introduced into the field of biology. Later, Chomsky proposed the term of language faculty and regarded language as “an organ of the body”. Different from traditional linguists’ description of the rules of language externalization, Chomsky focuses on the biological mechanism of internalized language. The challenge of theory of evolution in biology has also enriched the study of the origin and evolution of language. This thesis will begin with the mythological origin and philosophical foundation of language, chase the challenge of evolutionary theory, and discuss two groups of basic properties of language, which is unity and diversity, recursiveness and thinking, so as to further study the relation between language and its biological basis, that is, from language and speech organ, language and thought to language and gene, to analyze the uniqueness of human language competence.