MOTOR THEORY OF LANGUAGE IN RELATION TO SYNTAXRobinAllottauthorThe semantic, syntactic and phonetic structures of language develop from a complex preexisting system, more specifically the preexisting 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 action possible - a set of elementary motor subprograms together with rules expressed in neural organization 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 organization led directly to a systematic relation between language and the externally perceived world.Behavioral BiologySyntax1995Mouton de GruyterBook Chapter