<ctx:context-object xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XML" xmlns:ctx="info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:ctx" timestamp="2007-09-12T16:49:41Z" xsi:schemaLocation="info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:ctx http://www.openurl.info/registry/docs/info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:ctx"><ctx:referent><ctx:identifier>info:oai:cogprints.org:3286</ctx:identifier><ctx:metadata-by-val><ctx:format>info:ofi/fmt:xml:xsd:oai_dc</ctx:format><ctx:metadata><oai_dc:dc xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/ http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd" xmlns:oai_dc="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
        <dc:title>Motor theory of language origin: The diversity of languages</dc:title>
        <dc:creator>Allott, Robin Michael</dc:creator>
        <dc:subject>Evolution</dc:subject>
        <dc:subject>Comparative Linguistics</dc:subject>
        <dc:subject>Behavioral Neuroscience</dc:subject>
        <dc:description>The motor theory proposes that the complex semantic, syntactic and phonetic 
structures of language developed from a pre-existing complex system, more 
specifically the pre-existing motor system. Language thus emerged as an external 
physical expression of the neural basis for movement control. Features which 
made a wide range of skilled actions possible -- a set of elementary motor 
subprograms together with rules, expressed in neural organisation, for combining 
subprograms into extended action-sequences -- were transferred to form a 
parallel set of programs and rules for speech and language. The already 
established integration of motor control with perceptual organisation led 
directly to a systematic relation between language and the externally-perceived 
world. But if language originated in the establishment of new brain connections 
between the organisation of motor control and perception on the one hand and the 
neural and physiological systems involved in language on the other, how is it 
that as far back as can be traced there has been a multiplicity of different 
languages, with different phonological systems, different lexicons and different 
grammatical (syntactic and morphological) structures? Because of these 
differences, de Saussure, Bloomfield and most linguists have concluded, or 
assumed, that languages must be arbitary constructs, certainly as regards their 
lexicons, and that there can be no direct relation between the sound-structures 
of languages and the external world. The paper examines ways in which a 
reconciliation can be made between the hypothesis of a biological (physiological 
and neurological) process of language evolution and the observed diversity of 
languages. </dc:description>
        <dc:publisher>John Benjamins</dc:publisher>
        <dc:contributor>Wind, Jan</dc:contributor>
        <dc:contributor>Jonker, Abraham</dc:contributor>
        <dc:contributor>Allott, Robin</dc:contributor>
        <dc:contributor>Rolfe, Leonard</dc:contributor>
        <dc:date>1994</dc:date>
        <dc:type>Book Chapter</dc:type>
        <dc:type>NonPeerReviewed</dc:type>
        <dc:format>text/html</dc:format>
        <dc:identifier>http://cogprints.org/3286/1/diversty.htm</dc:identifier>
        <dc:identifier>Allott, Robin Michael (1994) Motor theory of language origin: The diversity of languages. [Book Chapter]</dc:identifier>
        <dc:relation>http://cogprints.org/3286/</dc:relation></oai_dc:dc></ctx:metadata></ctx:metadata-by-val></ctx:referent></ctx:context-object>