Language and the Mind

How the human mind could have developed language; why dualism, materialism, structuralism and reductionism have each come up short; the concept of emergentism; why this model offers the best framework for understanding the development of language.

The five components of language are pragmatics, syntax, semantics, morphology and phonetics; they contribute to the meaning of language; how language is, and is not, similar to other systems in the body; learning a second language can be challenging.

The aspects of language one takes for granted every day — one's ability to use symbols, understand rules, generate novel utterances, speak about the past and future and even purposefully lie — make language our greatest tool.

Whether language can be considered as an organism whose only natural habitat is the human mind; the results of the efforts to analyze and influence animal communication; one studies honeybees, songbirds, vervet monkeys, chimpanzees and dolphins.

There is no single gene for language or any other complex human system; the biological environment for the development of language; the relationship between the brain's Broca's and Wernicke's areas; language as a new machine built out of old parts.

Whether the human brain evolves a specialized mental organ for language; one's relationship to the human microbiome; not born with the bacteria in their microbiome, but one's biology is receptive to them; the relationship transforms one's abilities.