h a u s e r, c h o m s k y f i t c h(2002)- rice university（h u s e r、c h o m s k y f i t c h(2002)——莱斯大学）（11页）.docVIP

RECURSION: CORE OF COMPLEXITY OR ARTIFACT OF ANALYSIS? Derek Bickerton University of Hawaii 0. Introduction Several years ago, there appeared in the prestigious journal Science, which does not normally pay much attention to language, an article co-authored by Marc Hauser, Noam Chomsky and Tecumseh Fitch somewhat portentously entitled “The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?” (Hauser, Chomsky Fitch 2002, henceforth HCF) The article was placed in that section of the journal titled “Science’s Compass,” and it was indeed designed to give directions to us poor benighted folks who (unlike the authors of the article) had actually been laboring in the quagmire of language evolution studies for a number of years. The paper sought to derive the computational component of language (that is, what gives language its complexity) from a single process: recursion. The paper divided language into two parts: FLN (narrow faculty of language) and FLB (broad faculty of language) FLB = all the parts of language either not unique to humans or human but not uniquely involved in language FLN = all the parts of of language uniquely human and uniquely linguistic The working hypothesis:of the paper was that the sole content of FLN is recursion. Recursion, in turn, might well prove to be the exaptation of a faculty found in other species but used by them for non-linguistic purposes. Number, navigation, and social interaction were some of the functions suggested. 1. Some background In order to understand where HCF is coming from, some background information is necessary. Chomsky had for years avoided committing himself on language evolution. During the 1990s he saw the field expanding, making him irrelevant. The logic of minimalism forced him to become a player, but he needed leverage from biolog