Biolinguistics between the language gene, the fossils of language, Merge, and beyond

In this review article the subject under consideration is the status of the biolinguistics program as presented in The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics (2013). The discussion revolves around the problem of what its thematic coverage is and what the prospects of its expansion are according to this publication. The main challenges for biolinguistics are envisaged along the lines of the following three questions: Is it possible (and if yes under what conditions) for biolinguistics to broaden the spectrum of its program in terms of integration of theory, methods, and results from psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience? Is it capable of expanding in a sensible way beyond the set of questions included in its agenda within the generative grammar framework? Is it tenable for the biolinguistics program, as a result of this expansion, to undergo the metamorphosis of becoming the science of language out of life, or is this ‘mission impossible’?