[lbo-talk] Kenneally, some notes and background

[Miles Jackson]

Michael Smith wrote:
>
> If we're materialists, we have to assume -- don't we? -- 
> that language has some physical basis in the heads and/or
> bodies of the people who do language. Is it so far-fetched 
> to think that whatever that basis is, it might constrain 
> our linguistic capacity? 
>   

I don't think this "biological substate that contrains X" rhetoric is 
very helpful.  You can just as easily turn it around: "Is it so 
far-fetched to think that social conditions, whatever they may be, might 
constrain our linguistic capacity"?  Whether we privilege the 
"biological" or the "environment", we're artificially valorizing one 
element and treating the other as the element contrained/controlled by 
the valorized element.

Any human characteristic, language included, is an emergent property of 
the complex interaction of biological and environmental factors.  
So--your question is not helpful, because the question assumes a 
dichotomy between the "physical" and the "environment" that does not exist.

Miles