In this chapter we have covered a vast territory citing embryological, anatomical, physiological, and genetic facts pertinent to a great variety of animals. The aim of these excursions was to provide a panorama of the many aspects of the study of behavior and the scientific approaches to this study. We wished to demonstrate the intimate relationship between behavior and biological phenomena in general. We shall, in subsequent chapters, focus on language, but from the foregoing discussions it will be apparent that a biology of language must go far beyond the traditional subjects, namely beyond a demonstration that man is not the only communicating animal, and that certain animal experiments are analogous to language acquistion. Instead, we may expect that language, just as the other types of behavior disucssed in this chapter, is determined to a large extent by biological potentialities.
Vocabulary
embryological: adj,胚胎學的
excursion: n,離題
panorama:n, 全景, 全觀, 概觀
We have come to the following conclusions in the previous sections. The central nervous system and other tissues in the body develop simultaneously and influence one another continuously during morphogenesis. Also, the internal architecture of bones is in part influenced by muscle tonus, which in turn depends on central nervous system activity. As soon as embryonic tissues are sufficiently differentiated movement and primitive stages of behavior appear, and these develop pari passu with further embryonic development. In mammals and most birds, individuals emerge into the world after a complex ontogenetic history in which behavioral differentiation played as important a role as tissue differentiation. Once the individual mammal attains freedom from the intrauterine influence, he is neither a passive tool that may be put to any arbitrary use nor a tabula rasa into which behavior can be arbitrarily inscribed. There are biological limits to its future behavioral repertoire, and these express themselves as species-specificities. Such specificities are ever present and there is no behavior (including language) that is exempt from them. In many animals there is a certain degree of plasticity, but the building blocks of any behavior however arbitrarily it might have been shapted by exterior forces, remain species-specific reflexes, sensitivities, and motor patterns. Genetic transmission appears to play an important role in the fundamental nature of behavioral building blocks and their propagation through animal populations. There is in certain instances a developmental connection between the morphological charateristics and the behavioral characteristics of a species. However, a simple inspection of form does not ordinarily allow us to predict the complete behavioral characteristics of the animal. But if the animal's behavior is well-known, some of its morphological characteristics can then be related to function.
Vocabulary
central nervous system: n, 中樞神經系統
mophogenesis:n,型態生成，指由細胞、組織和器官分化形成生物體的胚胎學過程，及依據潛在機體的遺傳學「藍圖」和周圍環境條件而發育成器官
tonus: n, 肌肉的彈性,( 肌肉)強直性
embryonic: adj,關於胚的; 胚胎的, 胎生的;未發育的, 萌芽期的
tissue:n, (動植物的)組織
pari passu: 按同比例地; 按相同速度
ontogenetic: adj,個體發育的
intrauterine: adj,子宮內的
tabula rasa : n, 白板
inscribe: v,書寫於…; 雕刻於… ;雕刻 (文字);銘記, 牢記
exterior: adj,外部的; 外來的; 外在的
propagation: n,繁殖 ; 傳播 遺傳; 普及
In our investigations of biological foundations of language we shall examine anatomical and phsiological correlates: we shall attempt to follow the emergence of language through growth and maturation; and we shall attempt to see language in the context of the science of evolution. These and related matters must, by necessity, be treated in individual chapters. Yet none of these topics by themselves is likely to give us definitive clues to the biological nature of language. Each produces circumstantial evidence. only a synopsis of the entire material will give us a picture, however hazy, of the immensely intricate design of the whole.
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