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Levelt, W. J. M. (2018). Is language natural to man? Some historical considerations. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 21, 127-131. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2018.04.003.
Abstract
Since the Enlightenment period, natural theories of speech and language evolution have florished in the language sciences. Four ever returning core issues are highlighted in this paper: Firstly, Is language natural to man or just an invention? Secondly, Is language a specific human ability (a ‘language instinct’) or does it arise from general cognitive capacities we share with other animals? Thirdly, Has the evolution of language been a gradual process or did it rather suddenly arise, due to some ‘evolutionary twist’? Lastly, Is the child's language acquisition an appropriate model for language evolution? -
Friederici, A. D., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1986). Cognitive processes of spatial coordinate assignment: On weighting perceptual cues. Naturwissenschaften, 73, 455-458.
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Levelt, W. J. M. (1986). Herdenking van Joseph Maria Franciscus Jaspars (16 maart 1934 - 31 juli 1985). In Jaarboek 1986 Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (pp. 187-189). Amsterdam: North Holland.
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Levelt, W. J. M. (1986). Zur sprachlichen Abbildung des Raumes: Deiktische und intrinsische Perspektive. In H. Bosshardt (
Ed. ), Perspektiven auf Sprache. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zum Gedenken an Hans Hörmann (pp. 187-211). Berlin: De Gruyter. -
Levelt, W. J. M. (1980). On-line processing constraints on the properties of signed and spoken language. In U. Bellugi, & M. Studdert-Kennedy (
Eds. ), Signed and spoken language: Biological constraints on linguistic form (pp. 141-160). Weinheim: Verlag Chemie.Abstract
It is argued that the dominantly successive nature of language is largely mode-independent and holds equally for sign and for spoken language. A preliminary distinction is made between what is simultaneous or successive in the signal, and what is in the process; these need not coincide, and it is the successiveness of the process that is at stake. It is then discussed extensively for the word/sign level, and in a more preliminary fashion for the clause and discourse level that online processes are parallel in that they can simultaneously draw on various sources of knowledge (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic), but successive in that they can work at the interpretation of only one unit at a time. This seems to hold for both sign and spoken language. In the final section, conjectures are made about possible evolutionary explanations for these properties of language processing. -
Levelt, W. J. M. (1980). Toegepaste aspecten van het taal-psychologisch onderzoek: Enkele inleidende overwegingen. In J. Matter (
Ed. ), Toegepaste aspekten van de taalpsychologie (pp. 3-11). Amsterdam: VU Boekhandel.
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