Cover not available
Review published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 40:1 (2016) ► pp.235–252
Book review

Vyvyan Evans. The language myth: Why language is not an instinct
Cambridge University Press, 2014. xi, 304 pp. ISBN 978-1-107-61975-3paperback 978-1-107-04396-1hardback

Reviewed by
Published online: 29 April 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.40.1.09lap
References
Adger, David
2015 Mythical myths: Comments on Vyvyan Evan’s “The language myth”. Lingua 1581: 76–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Alun
2014 Why language is neither an instinct nor innate. Review of The language myth: Why language is not an instinct, by Vyvyan Evans. The New Scientist, October 18 2014 [URL]
Anderson, Michael
. in press. Précis of After Phrenology: Neural Reuse and the Interactive Brain . Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2015.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter
2005 Projection in interaction and projection in grammar. Text 25.1: 7–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Mark C.
2003 Lexical categories: Verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Behme, Christina
2014 A ‘Galilean’ science of language (Review article of The Science of Language: Interviews with James McGilvray, by Noam Chomsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012) Journal of Linguistics 501: 671–704. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Behme, Christina & Vyvyan Evans
2015 Leaving the myth behind: A reply to Adger (2015). Lingua, 1621: 149–159. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard
1933 Language. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa
2004 From universal to language-specific in early grammatical development [Reprint]. In K. Trott, S. Dobbinson, & P. Griffiths (eds.), The child language reader, 131–146. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2007 Containment, support, and beyond: Constructing topological spatial categories in first language acquisition. In M. Aurnague, M. Hickmann, & L. Vieu (eds.), The categorization of spatial entities in language and cognition, 177–203. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa, & Soonja Choi
2003 Space under construction: Language-specific spatial categorization in first language acquisition. In D. Gentner, & S. Goldin-Meadow (eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought, 387–427. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan
2006 From usage to grammar: the mind’s response to repetition. Language 82.4: 711–733. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chao, Yuen Ren
1934 On the non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic systems. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 41: 363–397.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam
1959 A review of BF Skinner’s Verbal behavior . Language 351: 26–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1966 Cartesian linguistics: a chapter in the history of rationalist thought. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
2012 The science of language: Interviews with James McGilvray. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, E. and M. Selting
2001 Studies in Interactional Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chung, Sandra
2012 Are lexical categories universal? The view from Chamorro. Theoretical Linguistics 38 (1–2): 1–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Busser, Rik & Randy J. LaPolla
(eds.) 2015 Language structure and environment: Social, cultural, and natural factors. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S.
2006 Functionalism and the Theory – Metalanguage confusion. In Phonology, morphology, and the empirical imperative: Papers in honour of Bruce Derwing, edited by Grace Wiebe, Gary Libben, Tom Priestly, Ron Smyth, and Sam Wang, pp. 27–59. Taipei: The Crane Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Dunbar, Ewan, Dave Kush, Norbert Hornstein, & David Adger
2015 3 reasons why Evans’s Aeon piece is wrong and largely begs the questions that generative linguists have been trying to address for over 60 years (A short series of posts) [URL]
Engh, A. E., Hoffmeier, R. R., Cheney, D. L. & Seyfarth, R. M.
2006 Who, me? Can baboons infer the target of vocalisations? Animal Behaviour 711: 381–387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Stephen C. Levinson
2009 The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 321: 429–492. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan
2014 Real talk: There is no language instinct. Aeon [URL]
2015a The shape-shifting malleability of ‘universals’ in UG. Language in the Mind blog, Psychology Today [URL]
2015b The structure of scientific revolutions: reflections on radical fundamentalism in language science. Language in the Mind blog, Psychology Today [URL]
2015c Joining the dodo. Language in the Mind blog, Psychology Today [URL]
Everett, Daniel
2005 Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: another look at the design features of human language. Current Anthropology 461: 621–646. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, Ray W. & Guy Van Orden
2010 Adaptive cognition without massive modularity. Language and Cognition 21: 149–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gray, Bennison
1980 The impregnability of American linguistics: An historical sketch. Lingua 501: 5–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K.
1994 An introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edition. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Harris, Roy
1981 The language myth. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
2002 Formal and functional explanation. Handout for lectures at Düsseldorf Summer School 2002 Available from [URL]
2004 Does linguistic explanation presuppose linguistic description? Studies in Language 28.3: 554–579. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Framework-free grammatical theory. In Heine, Bernd & Narrog, Heiko (eds.) The Oxford handbook of grammatical analysis, 341–365. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hauser, Marc D., Noam Chomsky, & W. Tecumseh Titch
2002 The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 2981: 1569–1579. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hockett, Charles F.
1960 The origin of speech. Scientific American 2031: 89–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1967 Where the tongue slips, there slip I. In: To honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the occasion of his seventieth birthday 11 October 1966, 910–36. The Hague: Mouton. [Reprinted in Hockett 1977, 226–56.]Google Scholar
1968 The state of the art. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1977 The view from language. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet
2008 An introduction to sociolinguistics, 3rd edition. London: Pearson Education ESL.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul
2011 Emergent grammar and temporality in interactional linguistics. In P. Auer & S. Pfänder (eds.), Constructions: Emerging and Emergent, 22–44. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Emergent grammar. In James Paul Gee & Michael Handford (eds.), The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis, 301–314. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert
2014 The verdict is in regarding Evans’ book. [URL]
2015a Quotational dyslexia: Thank you Masked Man. [URL]
2015b Does the LSA and its flagship journal ‘Language’ have any regard for Generative Grammar? [URL]
Itkonen, Esa
1996 Concerning the generative paradigm. Journal of Pragmatics 251: 471–501. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray
2002 Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
James, William
1907 Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking. Project Gutenberg EBook.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S.
1970 The structure of scientific revolutions, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [ International encyclopedia of Unified Science Vol. 2, No. 2]Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin
1989 The way we were; or; the real actual truth about generative semantics: a memoir. Journal of Pragmatics 131: 939–988. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W.
2000 A dynamic usage-based model. In M. Barlow & S. Kemmer (eds.), Usage-based models of language, 1–63. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
2002 Concept, image, and symbol, 2nd edition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
LaPolla, Randy J.
2015 On the logical necessity of a cultural connection for all aspects of linguistic structure. In De Busser & LaPolla 2015: 33–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Penny
1996 The Whorf theory complex. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
2006 On the human ‘interaction engine’. In N. J. Enfield & S. C. Levinson (eds.), Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition and interaction, 39–69. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Philip
2015 Review of The science of language: Interviews with James McGilvray , by Noam Chomsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012 Modern Language Review 110.1: 222–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Love, Nigel
2004 Cognition and the language myth. Language Sciences 261: 525–544. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick
1998 The irrelevance of typology for grammatical theory. Syntaxis 11: 161–197.Google Scholar
Onnis, Luca & Michael J. Spivey
2012 A new model visualization for the language sciences. In L. Onnis & M. J. Spivey (eds.) Information, Special issue on Cognition and Communication 3(1): 124–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partan, S. R. & Marler, P.
1999 Communication goes multimodal. Science 2831: 1272–1273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Passos, Maria de Lourdes R. da F. & Maria Amelia Matos
2007 The influence of Bloomfield’s linguistics on Skinner. The Behavior Analyst 30.2: 133–151. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinker, Steven
1994 The language instinct. New York: William Morrow. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Geoffrey
2001 Empirical linguistics. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
1997 [2005] Educating Eve: The ‘language instinct’ debate (Second revised edition published in 2005 as The ‘language instinct’ debate). London: Continuum International Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward
1921 Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Google Scholar
Seikel, J. A., D. W. King, & D. G. Drumright
2010 Anatomy & physiology for speech, language, and hearing (4th ed.). Delmar, NY: Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Seyfarth, Robert M. & Dorothy L. Cheney
2008 Primate social knowledge and the origins of language. Mind & Society 71:129–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 Social cognition. Animal Behaviour 1031: 191–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Slocombe, Katie E., Bridget M. Waller, & Katja Liebal
2011 The language void: the need for multimodality in primate communication research. Animal Behaviour 811: 919–924. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. & Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
2005 The clause as a locus of grammar and interaction. Language and Linguistics 6.4: 807–837.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. & Paul Hopper
2001 Transitivity, clause structure, and argument structure: Evidence from conversation. In Joan Bybee and Paul Hopper (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure, 27–60. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, Michael
1995 Language is not an instinct. Cognitive Development 101: 131–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter
2011 Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wardaugh, Ronald
2002 An introduction to sociolinguistics, 4th edition. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Whiten, Andrew
2013 Humans are not alone in computing how others see the world. Animal Behaviour 861: 213–221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whorf, Benjamin Lee
1956 Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, ed. by John B. Carroll. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

LaPolla, Randy J.
2016. Once again on methodology and argumentation in linguistics. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 39:2 ► pp. 282 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.