A Breakthrough Paper

  Sophie's Story looks at the strengths and limitations of Specific Language Impairment. The story of language and its origins that has been emerging on this blog is fairly simple: Members of the human lineage began using words when a population became communal enough to trust one another with shared knowledge. Those first language users differed from their ancestors in the nature of their community, not in the acquisition of some new verbal skill. Once populations of language users became competitive, selection pressures to enrich language functions grew stronger and new verbal abilities did evolve. The competition à enrichment cycle persisted and continued to produce expanded verbal abilities. How might such a story be tested? Points 1 and 2 imply that, intellectually, some parts of language should require no special human abilities, but point 3 implies that some parts of language do depend on special adaptations. So I have been keeping an eye open for any findings that would support or demolish these expectations. A review article by Heather K.J. van der Lely and Steven Pinker titled "The biological basis of language," seems to be the paper I have been looking for. Basing their work on the study of children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI), the authors sort syntax and phonology under two headings: basic and extended. Syntax: Basic An utterance falls under this heading if it is concrete and the meaning of a word is inherent or can be...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Source Type: blogs