``Trained in sociology, I'd be the first one to whine if I thought she was ignoring insights from sociology...''
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It was an impression, with its emphasis on biological results gained from what I had to go on in the lecture and essay. I suspected a certain desire for lab science, with its DNA sequencing machines, protein folding, molecular genetics, and neuroscience studies. I won't argue the point, since I haven't read the book.
Well, fact is, that's fine. Let's take on the idea that language is a product of biology... It was actually in bioscience labs that I started thinking about my own theories of language, from my long ago anthro classes.
I have hung with the molecular crew, sat in their endless lab meetings. I have to tell you the cell and molecular crew over in Kushland glance through their Nature and Science, etc, read stuff about social science and biology and raise their eyebrows. Back then sociobiology was emerging as quasi-legitimate area of biological study...
What I am saying is that if you want to develop the idea that language is a product of biology, you have to start with a biological model for language. What it sounded like was that linguistics was using their own model of language and going shopping in the bioscience mall for confirmation.
There are other problems. Linguistics seems quite taken with the distinction between animal and human and posits language as the threshold. Okay. But if you want to find a biological basis for language, you are going to have to entirely re-think that distinction and basically get rid of it.
Anyway, I'll order the book and see.
CG