The exploration of the nature of the minimalist program as a natural science: an analysis of its philosophical foundation and methodology

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 23520573
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Hokkaido University
• Principal Investigator: UEDA Masanobu 北海道大学, メディア・コミュニケ―ション研究院, 教授 (30133797)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): FUJITA Koji 京都大学, 大学院人間・環境学研究科, 教授 (00173427)
• Project Period (FY): 2011-04-28 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 生物言語学 / 科学革命 / Merge / メカニズム / 因果律

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this project, we have shown that biolinguistics has been developing through the homologous stages as modern science developed in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. We have also pointed out that biolinguistics as a modern (biological) science remains at its earlier stage in the sense that its explanatory principles including Merge (elementary syntactic operation) do not contain the notion of causality. Moreover, we have proposed the hypothesis of the motor control origin of Merge. Under this hypothesis, we claim that from the perspective of evolution, all functions of the faculty of language have continuity with the related functions of non-human animals, so that in order for MP to lead to a proper understanding of language evolution it is necessary to take this continuity view as a foundational assumption.

Free Research Field

言語学