On The Language Instinct

Anticipating Upcoming Words in Discourse: Evidence From ERPs and Reading Times.

“…With the notable exception of Altmann's (1997) The Ascent of Babel, the authors of recent psycholinguistics textbooks (e.g., Harley, 2001;Jay, 2003;Whitney, 1998) make no reference to the possibility that people might predict upcoming language in this way. Furthermore, prediction has also been notably absent in authoritative monographs and survey chapters on language comprehension (e.g., Cutler & Clifton, 1999;Frazier, 1999;Kintsch, 1998;Perfetti, 1999;Pinker, 1994). The one wellknown comprehension model that does have prediction as a fundamental part of its architecture (Elman, 1990; see also Altmann, 1997), although frequently acknowledged as an interesting case of neural network modeling, has been equally lightly discarded as irrelevant to human language comprehension (e.g., see Jackendoff, 2002, p. 59, note 17).…”

FOXP2 in focus: what can genes tell us about speech and language?

“…By contrast, groups of deaf children with restricted linguistic input can spontaneously create signing systems that have many hallmarks of natural spoken language, with structure at both word and sentence levels [5][6][7]. Over the years much evidence has accumulated to support the idea that aspects of our genetic makeup are critical for acquisition of spoken language [8]. Clearly some of the crucial changes are related to anatomical constraints [9].…”

“…For example, genetically encoded modifications of vocal tract morphology, which give us a longer oral cavity and lower larynx than other primates, are crucial for modern human speech, allowing us to produce a dramatically increased repertoire of sounds [9]. However, there are also likely to be genetic changes that impact on aspects of neurological development, including those that underlie our capacity for enhanced motor control over the articulators, as well as those that contribute to higher order cognitive processing involved in language acquisition and use [8].…”

Three Myths from the Language Acquisition Literature

“…Sounding a cautionary note, Pinker (1994) observed that ''the mere fact that some behavioral patterns run in families does not show it is genetic. Recipes, accents, and lullabies run in families, but they have nothing to do with DNA' ' (pp.…”

“…Indeed, POSA has been called ''a cornerstone of strong nativist claims about language'' (Elman et al, 1996, p. 385). For example, POSA has been used by Chomsky (e.g., 1965Chomsky (e.g., , 1980 and others (e.g., Pinker, 1994) to support the innateness hypothesis. Chomsky (1965, p. 58) argued that the ''degenerate quality and narrowly limited extent of the available data'' provide a major reason for asserting that the learner necessarily possesses innate knowledge about the ''general character'' of grammar, an argument that he later acknowledged was ''a variant of a classical argument in the theory of knowledge, what we might call 'the argument from poverty of the stimulus''' (Chomsky, 1980, p. 34).…”