The internal, the external and the hybrid: The state of the art and a new characterization of language as a natural object

• Main Authors: Sergio Balari, Guillermo Lorenzo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2018-02-01
• Series: Glossa
• Subjects: I-Language; E-Language; developmental hybrids; language development; Biolinguistics
• Online Access: https://www.glossa-journal.org/articles/330

The state of the art of the debate between externalist and internalist concepts of language is reviewed in this paper, and a new conceptualization of language as a “developmental hybrid” is suggested that entails that it equally comprises environmental and organism-internal component pieces, in an ultimately non dissociable way. The key for understanding this hybrid status is to be found in development, for when individually evolving, a general dynamic is observed in which organism-internal facilities selectively apply to certain designated aspects of the environmental stimulus, which in their turn have a facilitatory impact on these very same facilities. These kinds of loops inspire the conclusion that the internal and the external compose a single, integrated developmental unit.