Biolinguistics: Current state & future prospects

Abstract

The study of the biology of human language, biolinguistics, has been fruitfully investigated over the last sixty years. Many important insights have been gained into the questions of what language is (mechanisms and functions), how language develops (growth of language), and how language evolves in the species. Principles of symmetry have often helped to unify areas of the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology. The application of symmetry to the kinship system of the Warlpiri aborigines of Australia is examined to demonstrate how symmetry illuminates the intersection of language and other cognitive systems.