Pierre Pica
Encyclopedia
Pierre Pica is a research associate (Chargé de Recherche) at the National Center for Scientific Research. He is a specialist in theoretical linguistics and more specifically of comparative syntax.
Dr. Pica has concentrated his research on the notion of parameters in linguistic. He has also shown that the respective properties of reflexive pronouns could be derived from their morphological properties. He is currently studying the distinction between the internal and external aspects of the Faculty of language and is also working on a fine grained distinction between competence and performance.
Over the last ten years, Pica has risen to prominence as a result of his work on Mundurucu (an indigenous language spoken in Para (Brazil). He is collaborating with Stanislas Dehaene
and Elizabeth Spelke
in a study of numerical expressions and enumeration in Mundurucu. This study stresses the importance of these data for the study of the interaction of the Language Faculty and restricted set of pre-verbal 'core knowledge'. This research stands in opposition to the hypothesis related to relativism as derived from Sapir and Whorf in that it tends to demonstrate that knowledge, even culture, can in part be reduced to a small set of universal principles and intuitions. The research has given rise to a series of publications in Science magazine
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Dr. Pica has concentrated his research on the notion of parameters in linguistic. He has also shown that the respective properties of reflexive pronouns could be derived from their morphological properties. He is currently studying the distinction between the internal and external aspects of the Faculty of language and is also working on a fine grained distinction between competence and performance.
Over the last ten years, Pica has risen to prominence as a result of his work on Mundurucu (an indigenous language spoken in Para (Brazil). He is collaborating with Stanislas Dehaene
Stanislas Dehaene
Stanislas Dehaene is a professor at the Collège de France, author, and director of INSERM . He has worked on a number of topics, including numerical cognition, the neural basis of reading and the neural correlates of consciousness. Dehaene was one of ten people to be awarded the James S...
and Elizabeth Spelke
Elizabeth Spelke
Elizabeth Shilin Spelke is an American cognitive psychologist at the Department of Psychology of Harvard University and director of the Laboratory for Developmental Studies....
in a study of numerical expressions and enumeration in Mundurucu. This study stresses the importance of these data for the study of the interaction of the Language Faculty and restricted set of pre-verbal 'core knowledge'. This research stands in opposition to the hypothesis related to relativism as derived from Sapir and Whorf in that it tends to demonstrate that knowledge, even culture, can in part be reduced to a small set of universal principles and intuitions. The research has given rise to a series of publications in Science magazine
Science Magazine
Science Magazine was a half-hour television show produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1975 to 1979.The show was hosted by geneticist David Suzuki, who previously hosted the daytime youth programme Suzuki On Science...
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