Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2009 - Volume 32, Issue 05  

Open Peer Commentary

The discovery of language invariance and variation, and its relevance for the cognitive sciences

Luigi Rizzia1

a1 CISCL (Interdepartmental Centre for Cognitive Studies on Language), University of Siena, 53100 Siena, Italy. rizzil@unisi.it

Abstract

Modern linguistics has highlighted the fundamental invariance of human language: A rich invariant structure has emerged from comparative studies nourished by sophisticated formal models; languages also differ along important dimensions, but variation is constrained in severe and systematic ways. I illustrate this research direction in the domains of island constraints, word order restrictions, and the expression of referential dependencies. Both language invariance and language variability within systematic limits are highly relevant for the cognitive sciences.

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