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A shrug is not a sentence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2003

Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealandwww.ling.canterbury.ac.nz/

Abstract:

Corballis's claim that the origin of syntax lies in solely gesture is contested. His scenario does not explain why constraints on syntactic “movement” are apparently part of the human biological endowment for language. It also does not pay enough attention to the internal structure of sentences, and how they contrast with other linguistic units such as noun phrases.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003

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