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Mi alŝutis ĉi tiun artikolon el la lasta numero de la retrevuo "Biolinguistics", kie la Nederlanda lingvisto Jan Koster (kontraŭ la ĝenerala linio de la revuo) argumentas ke lingvo esence estas invento, ne naturaĵo. En du lokoj li uzas la ekziston de Esperanto kaj aliaj planlingvoj plede por sia vidpunkto. Jen la resumo:
Notions like ‘biolinguistics’ have a trivial and a non-trivial interpretation.
According to the trivial version, a cultural phenomenon like language is
only based on our innate biological capacities. Language, in this view, is not a
matter of biology per se but of applied biology, i.e. a form of technology.
Under this interpretation, ‘biolinguistics’ is uncontroversial and trivial
because all our cultural activities are grounded in our biology. According to
the non-trivial interpretation, the concept of language can be sufficiently
narrowly construed so that we can define a core capacity that is comparable
to a biological organ (like the heart or the liver). Recently, it has become
common to see this ‘faculty of language in the narrow sense’ (FLN) as some
abstract form of syntax characterized by recursive Merge. According to this
article, only the trivial interpretation of ‘biolinguistics’ is correct. It does not
make sense to define language in such a way that it excludes words. Words
are human inventions and the necessary tools to give linguistic functionality
to whatever biological capacities for recursive syntax we may have.
Ultimately, this means that only ‘lexicalist’ versions of generative grammar
can be correct. The agentive function assignment involved in the invention
of words distinguishes language from bodily organs, which do not derive
their functionality from human agency. More generally, cultural
transparency of biological structures is rejected as an ideological form of
Panglossian determinism and a denial of the “ceaseless creativity” and
freedom coming with human agency.
