2026-01-23
José-Luis Mendívil-Giró
Bernd Bierl eloquently proposes an ambitious synthesis towards biological linguistics. This synthesis aims to establish a new bio-ethological linguistics based on 4E cognition. It considers the foundational ethology of authors like Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen to be its biological basis. Rather than developing the biolinguistics inspired by Noam Chomsky, which also has its roots in early 20th-century European ethology, the author considers it an inadequate naturalization and suggests subsuming it under a conception of language as behavior, within the context of embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended (4E) cognition. This reply presents some critical observations on this proposal, highlighting the inadequate interpretation of the biolinguistic approach and the potential shortcomings of the proposed research program.
2025-12-09
Bernd Bierl
This article proposes a theoretical framework for a Bio-Ethological 4E Linguistics that integrates ethology, biolinguistics, and embodied cognition within a single biological continuum. It argues that the persistent division between linguistic internalism and behavioral biology has produced two incomplete naturalisms—one mental without life, the other biological without mind. By aligning Tinbergen’s four questions of ethology (mechanism, ontogeny, function, evolution) with the four dimensions of 4E cognition (embodiment, enaction, embeddedness, extension), the paper reconstructs language as an evolved form of biological sense-making rather than an abstract code. Classical ethology—represented by Tinbergen, Lorenz, Hinde, and Hess—anticipated many principles later formalized in enactive and embodied theories of mind, while contemporary 4E approaches have yet to ground their concepts in the empirical study of behavior. The proposed synthesis restores that missing continuity by treating linguistic interaction as a living process of regulation within ecological and social systems. Language, on this view, functions as an adaptive interface linking individual cognition to collective life. The article concludes with a programmatic agenda for a unified science of communication that spans neurobiological mechanisms, developmental dynamics, social coordination, and cultural evolution. A Bio-Ethological 4E Linguistics thus redefines language as life expressing itself through meaning—an approach that re-joins the study of mind with the study of behavior and situates linguistics within the broader biology of living systems.
2024-12-05
Jason Ginsburg
Some recent influential work in the Minimalist Program takes the position that Merge, the core language ability to recursively combine two elements together, is free. However, if Merge were completely free, there would be an infinite number of possible derivations for every utterance. Thus, Merge must be constrained in some way. In this paper, I describe a computer model of language that implements a limited form of Merge that is free. I attempt to demonstrate that, within the confines of the language module, Labeling is generally sufficient to constrain Free Merge, and I discuss issues that arise regarding overgeneration of syntactic structures given Free Merge.