Of Minds and Language A Dialogue with Noam Chomsky in the Basque Country [Paperback]

This book presents a state-of-the-art account of what we know and would like to know about language, mind, and brain. Chapters by leading researchers in linguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, cognitive neuroscience, comparative cognitive psychology, and evolutionary biology are framed by an introduction and conclusion by Noam Chomsky, who places the biolinguistic enterprise in an historical context and helps define its agenda for the future.

The questions explored include:

What is our tacit knowledge of language?
What is the faculty of language?
How does it develop in the individual?
How is that knowledge put to use?
How is it implemented in the brain?
How did that knowledge emerge in the species?

The book includes the contributor's key discussions, which dramatically bring to life their enthusiasm for the enterprise and skill in communicating across disciplines. Everyone seriously interested in how language works and why it works the way it does are certain to find, if not all the answers, then a convincing, productive, and lively approach to the endeavour.

1. Introduction,Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Pello Salaburu, and Juan Uriagereka
Part 1: Overtures
2. Opening Remarks,Noam Chomsky
3. The Nature of Merge: Consequences for Language, Mind, and Biology,Cedric Boeckx
4. The Foundational Abstractions,C. R. Gallistel
5. Evolingo: The Nature of the Language Faculty,Marc D. Hauser
6. Pointers to a Biology of Language?,Gabriel Dover
7. Language in an Epigenetic Framework,Donata Vercelli
8. Brain Wiring Optimization and Non-Genomic Nativism,Christopher Cherniak
Part 2: On Language
9. Hierarchy, Merge, and Truth,Wolfram Hinzen
10. Two Interfaces,James Higginbotham
11. Movement and Concepts of Locality,Luigi Rizzi
12. Uninterpretable Features l“.