The cognitive basis for linguistic structures1

Extract The Rockefeller University (at present, The University of Arizona) Originally published in R. Hayes (ed.), Cognition and Language Development (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1970), 279–362. Introduction We can all agree that the capacity to symbolize and communicate in language has powerful effects on how we think and behave, but how does the way we think affect the structure of our language? This article explores the ways in which specific properties of language structure and speech behavior reflect certain general cognitive laws. Recent investigations of language have made an important simplifying assumption: the primary subject for linguistic description is linguistic knowledge, as opposed to linguistic…