15 Kirby.indd

One of the most obviously striking features of human language, especially in comparison with all other communication systems in nature, is syntax. More precisely, language is unique in providing an open-ended system for relating signals and meanings, one which has its own internal structure. The particular structure of the mapping between meanings and signals varies from language to language, and for many researchers, the central challenge for linguistic theory is an explanation of the constraints on this variation. In other words, linguistics seeks an explanatory account of the universals of syntactic structure. A hugely influential approach to this explanatory challenge has involved a direct appeal to biology. In this view, syntax arises from our species-specific biological endowment which is specific to language. We have the languages we do because an innately given “language faculty” has a particular structure that constrains the possible types of language (e.g., Hoekstra and Kooij 1988). In particular, Chomsky (1975) suggests that it is a set of innate constraints on language acquisition that determines the nature of syntactic universals. This view directly relates universal properties of syntax on the one hand, with a universally shared biological trait on the other1. One issue with this