Long-Distance Paradox and the Hybrid Nature of Language

Abstract

Nonadjacent or longdistance dependencies (LDDs) are routinely considered to be a distinctive trait of language, which purportedly locates it higher than other sequentially organized signal systems in terms of structural complexity. This paper argues that particular languages display specific resources (e.g. noninterpretive morphological agreement paradigms) that help the brain system responsible for dealing with LDDs to develop the capacity of acquiring and processing expressions with such a humantypical degree of computational complexity. Independently obtained naturalistic data is discussed and put to the service of the idea that the abovementioned resources exert their developmental role from the outside, but in compliance with other internal resources, ultimately compounding an integrated developmental system. Parallels with other human and nonhuman developmental phenomena are explored, which point to the conclusion that the developmental system of concern can be assimilated to cases currently been conceptualized as 'cue response systems' or 'developmental hybrids' within the ecological developmental paradigm in theoretical biology. Such a conclusion is used to support the idea that both current externalist and internalist concepts fall short of a correct characterization of language.

Realization in biology?

“…The issue of what its role may possibly be in a language system is an obscure and open one (Barlow and Ferguson 1988). However, a reasonable developmental explanation is provided in Balari and Lorenzo (2018) and Lorenzo (2018), based on some clinical findings made by Harald Clahsen and coworkers.…”