How biological elements interact with language: The biolinguistic inquiry

Abstract

Biolinguistics realizes a scientific approach to study language both as a biological object (the language faculty) and an internal, intensional and individual language system (I-language), spurring a cross-disciplinary exploration of the biological nature of human language. The poverty of stimulus (POS) in language acquisition, together with the roles played by neurobiological factors in linguistic aphasia, specific language impairment and mirror deficits, confirms the biological nature of the language faculty and I-language. Based on the property, the classic molecular genetic study reveals how human genetic endowments canalize the development of human language, and they interact with specific linguistic experience during the maturation of human language. Further, the rapid development of biological research promotes an increasing emphasis on a more nuanced molecular network system, along with the existing interest in one-gene-one-behavioral phenotype. Thus, a synthetic perspective on the study of the biological part of language will function as a new departure for the incoming biolinguistic inquiry.

Keywords

• : biolinguistics
• language faculty
• genotype
• phenotype
• molecular genetics
• neurobiology
• review