The Three Basic Principles of Classical Biolinguistics and Their Contemporary Relevance

This paper looks back upon the history of biolinguistics, and views Syntactic Structures and A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior as the starting point of contemporary biolinguistics. The author points out that the research carried out by Meader & Muyskens and the thoughts contained in Handbook of Biolinguistics are classical biolinguistics where they put forward three basic principles, i.e. energy, integration and emergence. The paper develops the energy principle by proposing a new concept of "language energy", then analyzes properties of integration and emergence principles as well as dialectical relationship among the three basic principles. Finally, it reveals their contemporary relevance.