Of Grammar, Words, and Verses: In Honor of Carlos Piera, 5-18 Generative Semantics set out to unearth the intricacies of paradigms by applying the same computational devices that helped generative grammar account for syntagmatic dependencies. The proposal failed on empirical grounds, as paradigmatic relations lack the productivity, transparency and systematicity of syntagmatic ones, which the […]

International Journal of Evolutionary Biology 2011 (1), 382679 This paper examines the origins of language, as treated within Evolutionary Anthropology, under the light offered by a biolinguistic approach. This perspective is presented first. Next we discuss how genetic, anatomical, and archaeological data, which are traditionally taken as evidence for the presence of language, are circumstantial […]

This article clarifies the concept of cycle, or phase, in minimalist parlance. Cyclicity is a derivational condition if there is one, a strong constraint if derivational timing is so relevant that chunks of structure abandoning the derivation become opaque to further computation. The challenge continues to be to understand the exact nature of this condition, […]

Cuadernos de la ALFAL 3, 188-199 We study some syntactic properties of embedded sentences that seem to be associated to the verb‟ s modal inflection (indicative vs. subjunctive). Focusing on the island status of indicative clauses in some language families, we defend the possibility that such distinction, apparently morphological, has a structural correlate; more specifically, […]

Comparative Evolutionary Psychology, J. Vonk & T. K. Schackelford (eds.), a dedicated number of Evolutionary Psychology Comparative studies of language are difficult because few language precursors are recognized. In this paper we propose a framework for designing experiments that test for structural and semantic patterns indicative of simple or complex grammars as originally described by […]