Is linguistics a natural science

1 Language: internal or external? Although language uncontroversially has internal, psychological dimensions and external, cultural aspects, the focus of modern linguistics in the Chomskyan tradition has been primarily on the internal dimension (I-language, Chomsky 1986). It has often been seen as part of cognitive psychology, ultimately as a form of theoretical biology. From Lenneberg (1967) to Jenkins (2000), the ‘biolinguistic ’ perspective has been the leading thought. According to this view, a substantial part of language, particularly recursive core grammar, is the abstract description of a ‘language organ’. In this view, the human mind and the brain must be identical at some level, witness frequent use of terms like the mind/brain. It is expected (or hoped for), according to the biolinguistic perspective, that ultimately the study of I-language can, at least in principle, be unified with the core natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics). I will refer to this standard view as linguistic naturalism. Linguistic naturalism is not without critics, particularly outside the community of generative grammarians in the strict Chomskyan tradition. Thus, many continue to adhere to the traditional, cultural view of language, according to which language primarily is part of our cultural record and external to the human mind (E-language). Another important E-perspective on language is the linguistic Platonism advocated by the late Jerrold Katz and others (see, for instance, Katz 1990 and the works cited there). Personally, I think a fully naturalistic approach even to core grammar is untenable. I am a moderate Platonist and also committed to a version of the traditional view that language is in the first place a cultural phenomenon, crucially depending on a supra-individual, external record. I furthermore believe that the mind, unlike the brain, cannot be seen in isolation from the shared, external memory with which the brain lives in symbiosis (see Donald 1991). This external, cultural record determines how our biologically given resources are applied. A good example is playing the piano. It is of course based on our biological capacities: tone perception