168023 20260123152958.0 doi 10.5964/bioling.21633 sideral 147634 ART-2026-147634 eng Mendívil Giró, José Luis Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0001-6891-6275 On the Limits of Functionalism: A Reply to Bierl (2025) 2026 Bernd Bierl eloquently proposes an ambitious synthesis towards biological linguistics. This synthesis aims to establish a new bio-ethological linguistics based on 4E cognition. It considers the foundational ethology of authors like Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen to be its biological basis. Rather than developing the biolinguistics inspired by Noam Chomsky, which also has its roots in early 20th-century European ethology, the author considers it an inadequate naturalization and suggests subsuming it under a conception of language as behavior, within the context of embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended (4E) cognition. This reply presents some critical observations on this proposal, highlighting the inadequate interpretation of the biolinguistic approach and the potential shortcomings of the proposed research program. Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.es info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion 3013 575 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Lingüíst.y Liter.Hispán. Área Lingüística General 20 (2026), [7 pp.] Biolinguistics Biolinguistics 1450-3417 143023 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/168023/files/texto_completo.pdf Versión publicada 1364516 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/168023/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Versión publicada oai:zaguan.unizar.es:168023 articulos driver 2026-01-23-14:33:36 ARTICLE