Prof. William S-Y. WANG, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies

Human communication: language and its biological bases. International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL-29). Macao University of Science & Technology, Macao, 27-29 May 2023.

Abstract
40 years ago, I was invited by Scientific American to put together a volume, Human Communication: Language and Its Psychobiological Bases, which has a Chinese translation. Much new knowledge has been gained in this area over these decades in various disciplines from an evolutionary framework, especially in animal behavior, human genetics and cognitive neuroscience. Tomasello 2008 is a useful update, also with a Chinese translation. I will discuss selected topics in the new knowledge, including language acquisition, critical periods, cognitive decline. Currently the international literature is disproportionally based on WEIRD research (see Henrich et al 2010), my discussion will attend more to a Chinese context.