2003 Volume 31 Issue 2 Pages 104-121
Generative grammar constitutes one major branch of theoretical linguistics, but its more important role as biolinguistics can be found in the interdisciplinary field of human biology. By exploring one particular instance of the cognitive faculties of our species, i.e, the Language Faculty (or the Language Organ), researchers in generative grammar/biolinguistics aim to elucidate the fundamental properties of human intelligence, or human nature itself. In this paper, we overview the main topics of generative grammar/biolinguistics to see how deeply they are intertwined with those of modern biology. In particular, we take a new and enlightening look at the familiar issues of the nature, acquisition and evolution of the human language, its universality and diversity, and its economy and redundancy. These are here rephrased in terms of three different levels of genesis of language, i.e., microgenesis, ontogenesis, and phylogenesis, in the hope that their possible unification may be forthcoming.
