2004

I would like to say a few words about what has come to be called “the biolinguistic perspective,” which began to take shape half a century ago in discussions among a few graduate students who were much influenced by developments in biology and mathematics in the early postwar years, including work in ethology that was just coming to be known in the United States. One of them was Eric Lenneberg, whose seminal 1967 study Biological Foundations of Language remains a basic document of the field. By then considerable interchange was proceeding, including interdisciplinary seminars and international conferences. The most far-reaching one, in 1974 was called, for the first time, “Biolinguistics.” Many of the leading questions discussed there remain very much alive today