بعض توجّهات البحث التطبيقي في اللسانيات التوليدية

Abstract

The present contribution aims at delimiting the scope of a field of inquiry known under the label of applied linguistics , confining it to the realm of technical practices. Drawing on this fact, we have presented the findings of the empirical research that adheres to hypotheses of cognitive linguistics without accepting its speculative side imbued with inferential arguments. The objective is to substantiate innateness hypothesis building on positive non-inferential arguments. Such an objective is what a linguistic purview turned toward field and empiricism attempts to realize, without dismissing the theoretical heritage of generative linguistics. We take this linguistics to be the representative of the new applied linguistics that pays little attention to speculations relating to the internal design of language (I-language). Building on the conducted scientific works, which were either premised on D. Bickerton's bio-program hypothesis or adopted the four perspectives of the ethological approach, we tried to highlight the salient features of an applicative linguistics that falls within cognitive sciences, adopting an experimentally established approach that aims at unfolding the positive arguments in order to validate the two theses: the innate nature of language faculty and universal grammar as a mental organ. N. Chomky criticizes some aspects of those works, notably their position in favor of New Darwinism, stipulating that language is an adaptive feature of natural selection; he equally criticizes their simplistic comparatism that studies human language and animals’ codes of communication without taking into account the property of creativity unique to human language. Chomsky argues in favor of unifying cognitive sciences with neurosciences and biology. The hope of being able to inform solid propositions about the inextricable links existing between language, the mind and the brain is a distant horizon dependent on the said unification according to Chomsky.