2008/03/12

In the series of lectures on Darwin and Wallace, Juan Uriagereka discourses on the evolution of language

Juan Uriagereka, the linguist and Professor of the University of Maryland, delivered a lecture entitled "Desde abajo de la gramática" (Grammar from below) on 6 March in Bilbao, as part of the series "Darwin and Wallace, 150 years since the discovery of evolution," organised by CIC bioGUNE in conjunction with the British Council and the BBVA Foundation.

In a symposium moderated by Félix M. Goñi, Director of the Biophysics Unit of the University of the Basque Country, Uriagereka took as his starting point the evolution of language, "one of the few things Darwin and Wallace did not agree on". He then went on to refer to the FoxP regulating gene, "present in a host of chordate species, in equivalent neuronal circuits, involved in something like the memory of processes; curiously this exists in birds capable of vocal learning and in mammals with similar behaviour, bats, cetaceans and in apes, like the one using these words". He finished his paper on the question as to whether this gene "is the crux of grammar and whether there are grammars in other species, even though they are not used for speaking".

Winner of the Euskadi Award for Research 2001, Juan Uriagereka has been lecturing at the University of Maryland since 1989. He graduated at the University of Deusto in 1983 and was awarded a PhD by the University of Connecticut in 1988, under the supervision of Howard Lasnik. For two decades he has been in charge of the Graduate programme at Maryland, and is visiting professor at ten universities in Europe and North and South America. He has been commissioned with a number of projects by the National Science Foundation and has received various acknowledgements.