Biology and language: a response to Everett (2005)

Abstract

In a recent review article in this journal, Everett (2005) finds our book Anderson & Lightfoot (2002) (as well as Givón 2002) seriously lacking and unpersuasive in the case it attempts to make for the importance of an understanding of the human language faculty as an aspect of our species' biology. Negative reviews are of course a feature of academic life, but Everett's piece exhibits enough misconceptions and misrepresentations, both of our work and of the nature of biology, to warrant a response.