The present paper addresses some foundational issues on the status of parametric linguistics, understood as a partially independent new branch of formal grammar and of the cognitive sciences more generally. Chomsky’s (1964) original three levels of adequacy are extended to five and it is then suggested that the theory of parameters, being able to deal with cultural variation, is in the best position to achieve adequacy at the fourth proposed level, one connected with historical explanations, and some methods to pursue this goal are proposed. The development of parametric linguistics is viewed as a major step toward the potential application of the Galilean style of formal grammar both to the study of linguistic history and to other domains of cognitive science and cultural anthropology.
2023. Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza and the history of human languages: A linguist’s point of view. Human Population Genetics and Genomics► pp. 1 ff.
Longobardi, Giuseppe, Silvia Ghirotto, Cristina Guardiano, Francesca Tassi, Andrea Benazzo, Andrea Ceolin & Guido Barbujani
2015. Across language families: Genome diversity mirrors linguistic variation within Europe. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 157:4 ► pp. 630 ff.
Longobardi, Giuseppe & Cristina Guardiano
2009. Evidence for syntax as a signal of historical relatedness. Lingua 119:11 ► pp. 1679 ff.
Longobardi, Giuseppe & Cristina Guardiano
2017. Phylogenetic Reconstruction in Syntax: The Parametric Comparison Method. In The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax, ► pp. 241 ff.
2010. Universals, diversity and change in the science of language: Reaction to “The Myth of Language Universals and Cognitive Science”. Lingua 120:12 ► pp. 2699 ff.
Longobardi, Giuseppe & Ian Roberts
2011. Non-arguments about non-universals. Linguistic Typology 15:2
2016. Syntactic Parameters and a Coding Theory Perspective on Entropy and Complexity of Language Families. Entropy 18:4 ► pp. 110 ff.
Mendívil-Giró, José-Luis
2018. Why Don't Languages Adapt to Their Environment?. Frontiers in Communication 3
Narita, Hiroki
2010. The Tension between Explanatory and Biological Adequacy. Lingua 120:5 ► pp. 1313 ff.
Newmeyer, Frederick J.
2008. Universals in syntax. The Linguistic Review 25:1-2
Port, Alexander, Taelin Karidi & Matilde Marcolli
2022. Topological Analysis of Syntactic Structures. Mathematics in Computer Science 16:1
Roberge, Paul T.
2012. The Teleology of Change: Functional and Non‐Functional Explanations for Language Variation and Change. In The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics, ► pp. 367 ff.
Santos, Patrícia, Gloria Gonzàlez-Fortes, Emiliano Trucchi, Andrea Ceolin, Guido Cordoni, Cristina Guardiano, Giuseppe Longobardi & Guido Barbujani
2020. More Rule than Exception: Parallel Evidence of Ancient Migrations in Grammars and Genomes of Finno-Ugric Speakers. Genes 11:12 ► pp. 1491 ff.
2018. Syntactic Phylogenetic Trees. In Foundations of Mathematics and Physics One Century After Hilbert, ► pp. 417 ff.
Shu, Kevin, Andrew Ortegaray, Robert C. Berwick & Matilde Marcolli
2021. Phylogenetics of Indo-European Language Families via an Algebro-Geometric Analysis of Their Syntactic Structures. Mathematics in Computer Science 15:4 ► pp. 803 ff.
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