Papers by Victor M. Longa
Revista Galega de Filoloxía, 2002
A noción de opcionalidade tense aplicado tradicionalmente en Gramática Xerativa cando un mesmo co... more A noción de opcionalidade tense aplicado tradicionalmente en Gramática Xerativa cando un mesmo conxunto léxico inicial pode orixinar libremente derivacións alternativas, obtendo cada unha delas unha diferente representación gramatical, independentemente do número de pasos precisados para chegar a cada representación. Dende o comezo da Gramática Xerativa formuláronse análises opcionais de moitas construcións alternativas. Non obstante, esta óptica cambiou drasticamente co Programa Minimalista. No presente artigo, indagarase nas razóns do tratamento tan restritivo da opcionalidade que fai este modelo.
This piece analyzes textbooks of the subject Castilian Language belonging to the Spanish secondar... more This piece analyzes textbooks of the subject Castilian Language belonging to the Spanish secondary education (E.S.O.; 12-16 years), and published by the two main Spanish textbook publishing houses (Anaya and Santillana). We aim at showing how those textbooks reproduce and transmit the standard ideology. This ideology proceeds by overvaluating the standard variety, and undervaluating and stigmatizing the remaining varieties, which are taken to be incorrect. Sadly, that framework means that students are taught to discriminate people according to the linguistic variety adhered to. The paper makes the point that the educational field should abandon those ideas on language and variation, which Linguistics has shown to be prejudices. Este trabajo analiza los libros de texto de la materia Lengua Castellana pertenecientes a la ensenanza secundaria en Espana (E.S.O.; 12-16 anos) publicados por las dos principales editoriales espanolas de libros de texto (Anaya y Santillana). El analisis pret...
Fossil DNA analysis may become an important source of evidence in Paleoanthropology, in the sense... more Fossil DNA analysis may become an important source of evidence in Paleoanthropology, in the sense that it may throw light on the inconclusiveness of more traditional evidence that discipline is concerned with (fossil reconstructions, etc.). However, caution is in order: if paleogenetic evidence is not rightly understood, inferences brought to the fore from it could be as ambiguous as the more traditional body of evidence. Our paper makes the point that prudence is required when trying to draw inferences about behavior or cognition from the fossil DNA analysis. We illustrate such a point by discussing the recent discovery of the modern FOPX2 gene version in Neanderthals. Many paleoanthropologists have taken that discovery to be the definitive proof of the existence of complex language in that species. We will aim at showing that the aforementioned inference cannot be automatically established: it is based on a simplistic and reductionist view, which assumes, among many other aspects,...
Munibe …, 2008
Las características hipotéticamente asignadas a los diferentes homínidos que integraron la evoluc... more Las características hipotéticamente asignadas a los diferentes homínidos que integraron la evolución humana siempre han originado controversias. Especialmente polémica ha sido la capacidad cog-nitiva y lingüística atribuible al Homo neanderthalensis, algo difícil de establecer.
On Dixon’s ‘dangerous idea’
Folia Linguistica
In his book Are some languages better than others?, the leading linguist R.M.W. Dixon put forward... more In his book Are some languages better than others?, the leading linguist R.M.W. Dixon put forward what we refer to as ‘Dixon’s dangerous idea’, i.e. the idea that linguistics should evaluate the relative worth of languages and provide some general criteria for deciding whether certain languages can be taken to be better or worse than others. Although it is obviously licit to raise this question, Dixon’s arguments when answering it are inaccurate, thus spreading a dangerous idea. This article critically discusses Dixon’s proposals and shows how his arguments draw on arbitrary and decontextualized criteria, and on naive evolutionary ideas of absolute fitness.
Aula de encuentro, Oct 14, 2022
Lamentablemente, no corren buenos tiempos para la educación. Una visión acrítica y autocomplacien... more Lamentablemente, no corren buenos tiempos para la educación. Una visión acrítica y autocomplaciente desde el mundo occidental asumiría que tal afirmación solo rige para contextos ajenos a él. Ciertamente, los ejemplos abundan al respecto: por restringirnos a uno, sigue existiendo todavía un fuerte colonialismo educativo en muchos países oficialmente descolonizados de África, Asia, América u Oceanía (cf. infra). Sin embargo, la afirmación inicial también rige para el ámbito occidental, nuestro propio contexto. Las sociedades que lo conforman, supuestamente democráticas, no lo son tanto desde una óptica social ni educativa (la democracia plena implica mucho más que ejercer el derecho al voto cada cierto tiempo), y la razón de ello yace en una paradoja, apuntada por Baron (2000, p. 16) y tantas veces denunciada por Paulo Freire, según la cual en nuestras sociedades existen colonias internas en un mundo postcolonial, lo que se traduce en la presencia de grupos
Adaptive Plasticity
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2019
Noam Chomsky and Linguistics
This paper provides the reader with a linguistically-based critical analysis of the radical presc... more This paper provides the reader with a linguistically-based critical analysis of the radical prescriptivism that characterizes the thought of Alex Grijelmo. This scholar is an alleged ‘language expert’ who has written a number of books denouncing the supposed degeneration Spanish language currently faces to. The article critically discusses Grijelmo’s theses and shows that they are endowed with misguided aspects, like lack of judgement, a number of contradictions and misunderstandings, a serious ignorance of linguistic facts, or a discriminatory treatment toward dialectal varieties of Spanish and their features. Through such an analysis, the paper aims at showing that the prescriptivist perspective cannot be sustained from a linguistic view. El presente articulo ofrece un analisis critico basado en premisas puramente linguisticas del pensamiento prescriptivista extremo de un supuesto ‘experto en lenguaje’, Alex Grijelmo, autor de una serie de libros que denuncian la supuesta degenera...
Adaptive Plasticity
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2021
teorema, 2009
Recently, the field of evolutionary computer simulations has become very interested in the Baldwi... more Recently, the field of evolutionary computer simulations has become very interested in the Baldwin effect (i.e. the hypothesis that learned behaviours may become inherited). The simulations start from the assumption of the very existence of the Baldwin effect in the biological (i.e. real) world, aiming at modelling its behaviour virtually. This paper makes the point that caution is in order as regards the wide computational use of the Baldwin effect, because such an effect lacks empirical evidence.
Biolinguistics
fossils of language" (FFI2010-14955). We are grateful to two anonymous Biolinguistics reviewers f... more fossils of language" (FFI2010-14955). We are grateful to two anonymous Biolinguistics reviewers for their comments and suggestions on this paper. 1 Lenneberg too was concerned with promoting nativism, as the following passage reveals: "There is, then, nothing unscientific about the claim that a species-specific behavior pattern, such as language, may well be determined by innate mechanisms" (Lenneberg 1967: 221).
Biolinguistics
Die Philosophie löst Knoten auf in unserm Denken; daher muß ihr Resultat einfach sein, das Philos... more Die Philosophie löst Knoten auf in unserm Denken; daher muß ihr Resultat einfach sein, das Philosophieren aber so kompliziert wie die Knoten, welche es auflöst. 1 L. Wittgenstein, Zettel, § 452 'language' here is a technical term referring to sets specified as collections of strings made up of symbols taken from a finite alphabet. Thus, for example, the set of integers Z = {…,-1, 0, 1, …} may be represented in binary by the language made up of strings over the alphabet Σ = {0, 1} as Z = {…, 10000001, 00000000, 00000001, …}, for an 8 bit system. 3 2 The idea that the brain is an analog, parallel processor that nonetheless implements serial, digital processes is supported by evidence coming from different fields, such as neural computation (Sarpeshkar 1998, 2009), neurobiology (Alle & Geiger 2006, Shu et al. 2006) and neuropsychological models (Zylberberg et al. 2011). This, in fact, adds an extra dimension of variation to the ones to be proposed below, namely the possibility that the neural computations underlying certain behaviors follow the analog, parallel path instead of the digital, serial one. We will have nothing to say about that in this paper, but see Balari & Lorenzo (to appear: chap. 8) for discussion. 3 Unless otherwise stated, and in addition to Chomsky's original papers cited in the text, our basic references in the following informal presentation of language and automata theory are
Aula de encuentro: Revista de investigación y comunicación de experiencias educativas, Apr 29, 2015
Actualmente, existe un amplio consenso en teoría de la educación sobre la necesidad de reconocer ... more Actualmente, existe un amplio consenso en teoría de la educación sobre la necesidad de reconocer y fomentar la diversidad (social, étnica, cultural, etc.). Este artículo analiza los libros de texto de Lengua Castellana de la editorial Santillana en todos los niveles educativos preuniversitarios para comprobar si ese reconocimiento abarca también el ámbito lingüístico. El análisis revela una sorprendente asimetría: los libros fomentan la diversidad en todos sus planos, incluyendo el interlingüístico (existencia de diferentes lenguas), pero la diversidad intralingüística (existencia de variedades internas a una lengua) es estigmatizada, al considerar que sólo la variedad estándar es 'correcta'. El artículo sostiene la necesidad de abandonar este último reducto de uniformización para alcanzar así una escuela realmente democrática, que evite cualquier discriminación. 17.1 6 Mosquera, C. y Longa, V.M.: Cuando la diversidad molesta: el tratamiento de la diversidad intralingüística en libros de texto de Lengua Castellana.
This work has been funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of the Spanish Government (Bi... more This work has been funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of the Spanish Government (Biolingüística: evolución, desarrollo y fósiles del lenguaje; FFI2010-14955). We wish to thank Sergio Balari and an anonymous reviewer for their comments to early drafts of this note.
ELUA. Estudios de Lingüística Universidad de Alicante, 2006
El reciente descubrimiento del gen FOXP2 ha ofrecido la primera evidencia clara de la base genéti... more El reciente descubrimiento del gen FOXP2 ha ofrecido la primera evidencia clara de la base genética del lenguaje, mostrando una correlación inequívoca desde la perspectiva genética entre una versión mutada de F0XP2 y los trastornos lingüísticos de diferente tipo sufridos por una familia inglesa, conocida como KE. El objetivo central del presente trabajo es discutir diferentes aspectos relacionados con tal descubrimiento; especialmente, la discusión del significado de FOXP2 con respecto al lenguaje y al desarrollo del lenguaje.
Lingua, 2003
This paper examines the main ideas of the Minimalist Program (MP) with the aim of evaluating its ... more This paper examines the main ideas of the Minimalist Program (MP) with the aim of evaluating its virtues as a biological framework for the understanding of human language. Our conclusions are basically three. First, the MP favors a certain reconciliation between the abstract characterization of language and characterizations derived from other biological concerns. Second, the MP reduces the role of the genetic endowment for language and relies more on epigenetic processes, in clear agreement with other aspects of the study of the brain. Third, the MP favors an essential identification of the processes of ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of language, a rather controversial conclusion but also a very important one from a theoretical point of view.
Catalan working papers in linguistics, 1994
In this paper, I will focus on the properties of the Galician Inflected Infinitive (heuceforth. G... more In this paper, I will focus on the properties of the Galician Inflected Infinitive (heuceforth. GII). I argue, against Raposo (1987), that the behaviour of the Iníiected Infinitive in Portuguese and Galician is not the same. I will contend that all the GI1 structures are full CPs. Another important property of Galician, closely related to the existence of the Inílected Infinitive, is that agreement with non-finite forms is not restricted to the infinitivd forn: the gerund can also bear agreement. The analysis of Iníiected Infinitive constructions as CPs will be extended to the iníiected gerund.
Monkey’s morphology? A critical appraisal on a supposed morphology-like behavior.According to man... more Monkey’s morphology? A critical appraisal on a supposed morphology-like behavior.According to many ethologists, the vast majority of linguistic properties and features are not uniquely human, but do exist in nonhuman animals as well. Very recently, Ouattara, et al. (2009) have broadened the range of language properties which are supposedly shared by nonhuman organisms: they have claimed that a species of Old World monkeys is endowed with a morphology-like behavior. Our paper has two main objectives: firstly, we aim at critically discussing Ouattara’s claim by showing that the behavior shown by Campbell monkeys has nothing to do with true morphology, if morphology is rigorously considered. Secondly, and more generally, we critically analyze the strategy of attributing linguistic behaviors to animals, which has pervaded ethological studies.
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Papers by Victor M. Longa