Group items tagged

Further study revealed that the FOXP2 gene is relevant to multiple mental abilities and is not strictly a language gene at all.

The same gene that regulated language so strongly also regulated other mental faculties, so its very existence appeared to contradict rather than strengthen the idea that language commands its own territory separate from other areas of the brain.

the language-as-island idea is also inconsistent with the way evolution typically works. “What I don’t like about the ‘module’ is the idea that it evolved from scratch somehow. In my view, it’s more that existing neural circuits have been adapted for language and speech.

-month-old babies show activation in a number of different brain regions when they hear speech, inclu

ding in the cerebellum, which is important for coordinating motor movements

The problem with ‘gene for x’ or ‘grammar module y’ is they ignore how something that is the property of an individual is linked to something that is the property of a community

language is a distributed object

across the human brain and across generations of people

We tend to understand ourselves through our inventions