I will look forward to comments as to what some of you language experts and amateurs think of this article.
I can't help thinking that using evolutionary biology techniques (although I do not really see where they were used other than selecting 'word order' as a part of Language's DNA) on language is another (possibly failed) attempt to think that Darwinism is the one and only hammer where everything else is a nail.
Also, I'm not sure that 'word order' was the best characteristic to study, other than it being the easiest.
1 comment:
Your suspicion that this study may not be the end of the matter is well taken, as many of the comments to the article also assert.
But, if it turns out the the study has stumbled upon something real, and if, indeed, language is the house of being, then there must be many very different dwelling places for being.
Heidegger explains his house of being comment by saying that language is the mode by which we appropriate (i.e. take hold of or grasp) being. If there is any truth behind this study, people must grasp being in very different and perhaps unbridgeable ways.
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