section_path: Approaches/Biological
section_name: Biological
paragraph_text: Biological
  
  Approaches such as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar study linguistic cognition with a view towards uncovering the biological underpinnings of language. In Generative Grammar, these underpinning are understood as including innate domain-specific grammatical knowledge. Thus, one of the central concerns of the approach is to discover what aspects of linguistic knowledge are innate and which are not.
  
  Cognitive linguistics, in contrast, rejects the notion of innate grammar, and studies how the human mind creates linguistic constructions from event schemas, and the impact of cognitive constraints and biases on human language. In cognitive linguistics, language is approached via the senses.
  
  A closely related approach is evolutionary linguistics which includes the study of linguistic units as cultural replicators. It is possible to study how language replicates and adapts to the mind of the individual or the speech community. Construction grammar is a framework which applies the meme concept to the study of syntax.
  
  The generative versus evolutionary approach are sometimes called formalism and functionalism, respectively. This reference is however different from the use of the terms in human sciences.