생물언어학과 통사론의 진화적 타당성

Abstract

Biolinguistic inquiry concerns the human language faculty as an internal biological property. This paper aims at investigating the evolutionary adequacy of the Minimalist Program (MP). Evolutionary biology shows that perfection, simplicity, optimality, and economy do not arise in evolving systems; however, the MP is argued to have these characteristics as its goal. The question is whether these opposing views of biological imperfection and minimalist perfection can be reconciled in any way. From an evolutionary perspective, the MP seems to be implausible due to its apparent “imperfections” of narrow syntax. To solve the problem of imperfections found in the MP, the MP restricts “perfection” to narrow syntax and consider imperfections as satisfying external conditions (or design conditions). However, for evolutionarily adequate minimalist theories, the MP should consider empirical observations in diverse biolinguistic fields, and adjust to what we know of how evolution works.