The Roots of Current Biolinguistic Thought: Revisiting the "Chomsky-Piaget Debate" in the Context of the Revival of Biolinguistics.

There is no doubt that the Chomsky-Piaget meeting at Royaumont set the agenda for what Piattelli-Palmarini (2001) calls "classical cognitive science", which I take to provide the foundation for the field of cognitive biology and of biolinguistics in particular. As this paper reviews, all the themes that the Royaumont meeting made famous have come back in the context of the revival of biolinguistics in recent years. This paper, however, demonstrates that for each of these themes, the research directions favored now depart from those that came to define the "classical" position. The departure is highlighted by revisiting the conclusions reached by Piattelli-Palmarini in his 1994 reassessment of the Royaumont meeting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]