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Towards an integrated science of language

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, Article number: 0163 (2017) Cite this article

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It has long been assumed that grammar is a system of abstract rules, that the world's languages follow universal patterns, and that we are born with a ‘language instinct’. But an alternative paradigm that focuses on how we learn and use language is emerging, overturning these assumptions and many more.

The philosopher Susan Haack1 likens science to a crossword puzzle. In crosswords, the harder the clues, the more we benefit from their interrelations: 3 down helps us to solve 5 across and vice versa. This logic underpins the power of integration across methods and levels of explanation throughout the natural sciences. Yet the study of language has too often taken precisely the opposite approach. Research on syntax, semantics, language typology and change, computational linguistics, language processing, child language acquisition and language evolution has become disconnected, and their proposals hopelessly incompatible. But allowing the language sciences to fragment is like trying to solve a crossword by first treating each clue independently, and only trying to fit them together at the very end — a strategy that is surely doomed to fail.

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Acknowledgements

N.C. was supported by ERC grant 295917-RATIONALITY, the ESRC Network for Integrated Behavioural Science (grant number ES/K002201/1), the Leverhulme Trust (grant number RP2012-V-022), and Research Councils UK Grant EP/K039830/1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, 14853, New York, USA

    Morten H. Christiansen

  2. Behavioural Science Group, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

    Nick Chater

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  1. Morten H. Christiansen
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  2. Nick Chater
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Correspondence to Morten H. Christiansen.

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Christiansen, M., Chater, N. Towards an integrated science of language. Nat Hum Behav 1, 0163 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0163

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