BIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS IN LANGUAGE PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

Recent studies in linguistic theory have undeniably gained remarkable progress, yet they have fallen short of achieving their ultimate goal partly because they tend to take a more static than dynamic approach to language, and partly because they have often been grossly misguided. For despite the fact that linguistics is one of the established sciences, it is a very special kind of science and has to be treated as such. And since language comprises both tangible components (e.g. sound and grammatical rules) as well as intangible ones (e.g. meanings), then it is inevitable for any comprehensive linguistic theory to handle both types equally well. In this paper, I intend to show that the main reason for the failure of past theories of meaning, no matter what their creed might be, is that they tend to side-step the vital role of the human mind, neglecting thus the biolinguistic interpretation of language production and perception and concentrating on aspects extraneous to the human mind. In pursuance of this aim, I will make two claims, which, in my opinion, are simple but fundamental for any linguistic theory: first, that meaning is intrinsically different from mental states such as pain, depression