Annotation:
Ten Cate, C. (2017). Assessing the uniqueness of language: Animal grammatical abilities take center stage. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 91-96. https://dx.doi.org/10.3758%2Fs13423-016-1091-9
The author presents the “Strong Minimalist Thesis” that the essence of language is that we combine or ‘merge’ elements. An element can be a noun, a verb, an article, a pronoun, etc.. She claims that the ability of a brain to search concepts and output behavior is not unique to humans, but that what is unique is the ability to “merge” concepts. She, therefore, concludes that arguments about the speech apparatus, such as the location of the larynx and hyoid bone in apes vs. humans, are irrelevant to understanding the evolution of language. She also concludes that this ability to “merge” could have evolved very quickly without leaving any fossil evidence, which would be consistent with the fact there is a gap in the fossil record. I found a weakness to be that Ten Cate doesn’t deal with how this “merge” concept relates to other ideas about language (e.g. hierarchical structures, etc.) as well as repeating much of Bolhuis et al.’s earlier paper, even some diagrams. The writing itself is confusing and scattered and therefore less likely to be useful to me.
After reading the sample student annotated bibliography, answer the following questions. If the annotation does not offer a clear answer to the prompt, be sure to state this in your response:
(1) Identify the claim made by the author(s) of the article (e.g., “The authors claim that language…”)
(2) Identify the main strength(s) in the study, according to the student . (e.g., “According to the student, the main strength is…”)
(3) Identify the conclusion(s) reached by the author(s) of the article (e.g., “The author determined that…”)
(4) Are there any limitations in the study, according to the student? (e.g., “The student states that the study was not current…”)
(5) Did the student find the source useful/not useful for his/her own work? Why or why not? (e.g., “It’s unclear if the student found the source useful…”)
