The Philosophy of Universal Grammar

Wolfram Hinzen is a Research Professor at the Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies and Research (ICREA) and affiliated with the linguistics department of the University of Barcelona and the Philosophy Department of the University of Durham (2006-2014). He writes on issues in the interface of language and mind. He is the author of Mind Design and Minimal Syntax (OUP, 2006) and An Essay on Names and Truth (OUP, 2007) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality (OUP, 2012).Michelle Sheehan is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge specialising in comparative syntax with a particular interest in the Romance languages. She has worked on null arguments, Control, word order variation, extraposition, clausal-nominal parallels and case/alignment. She is co-author of Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory (CUP, 2009) and the forthcoming volumes The Final over Final Constraint (MIT Press) and Theoretical Approaches to Disharmonic Word Orders (OUP).

• 1. The Project of a Science of Language ; 2. Before There was Grammar ; 3. The Content of Grammar ; 4. Deriving the Formal Ontology of Language ; 5. Cross-linguistic Variation ; 6. The Rationality of Case ; 7. Language and Speciation ; 8. Biolinguistic Variation ; 9. Thought, Language, and Reality

A radical vision that challenges standard conceptions that human language is a mere conduit for thought, that there is a Language of Thought, and that Grammar and Semantics are separable. Hinzen and Sheehan ground their Un-Cartesian approach in ancient linguistic traditions in India and in the work of the Modistae, for whom grammar was central to an understanding of minds, and reality. Upturning major assumptions of modern Linguistics and Philosophy of Language, this enthralling book is a central one for Cognitive Science