20世纪70年代，转换生成语言学认为人类语言具有生物学属性，这一科学信念为许多遗传学家和模块生物学家所赞同和接受，在此基础上生物语言学得以催生。生物语言学的创立标志着语言学研究向生物学范式的转向；生物语言学视野下的语言学研究旨在研究人脑语言机制及其何以突现生成语言及结构。“生物语言学”研究有助于对语言本质的揭示，促进了语言学进一步发展，也将有助于促进语言学家对人类语言生物机制及儿童语言习得机制的进一步了解。

This book, by leading scholars, represents some of the main work in progress in biolinguistics. It offers fresh perspectives on language evolution and variation, new developments in theoretical linguistics, and insights on the relations between variation in language and variation in biology. The authors address the Darwinian questions on the origin and evolution of language from a minimalist perspective, and provide elegant solutions to the evolutionary gap between human language and communication in all other organisms. They consider language variation in the context of current biological approaches to species diversity - the 'evo-devo revolution' - which bring to light deep homologies between organisms. In dispensing with the classical notion of syntactic parameters, the authors argue that language variation, like biodiversity, is the result of experience and thus not a part of the language faculty in the narrow sense. They also examine the nature of this core language faculty, the primary categories with which it is concerned, the operations it performs, the syntactic constraints it poses on semantic interpretation and the role of phases in bridging the gap between brain and syntax. Written in language accessible to a wide audience, The Biolinguistic Enterprise will appeal to scholars and students of linguistics, cognitive science, biology, and natural language processing.