After writing a piece toI suggest that the information transfer rate of consolidation of children and adults is similar based on my back-of-the-envelope calculation for the consolidation of English words (at about 0.0006 bits per second in both children and adults), I spent several hours reviewing past lectures by Noam Chomsky. I listened to his 1.5-hour lecture on language as posted on YouTube and delivered at MIT in 2019 before a group of students and colleagues. Once his lecture was over, he was asked a question by a student about how neurons carry out the “genetically endowed” language computations [by the Language Acquisition Device] in children/adults (since such details were largely absent in his lecture). He suggested that the neurons of the brain are much too slow to execute the computation (called Merge) that he was talking about and that computations must be carried out at the subcellular/molecular level as described by Roger Penrose (and studied by Eric Kandel 2006).
On the point of speed of processing, we understand that the transmission duration of a chemical synapse is about one millisecond and that it can take tens of milliseconds for signals to be transmitted from caudal to rostral parts of the neocortex (Schiller and Tehovnik 2015; Yeomans and Tehovnik 1988). Therefore, Chomsky must be thinking in the micro-second range. Whether this microseconds duration of computation time would render the linguistic signal unconscious is unclear; note that the duration of consciousness/thinking is estimated to occur in the millisecond to second range (Varela 1999ab; Dwarakanath, Logothetis 2023).
If a neocortical hemisphere is damaged in children, language ability can be assumed by the undamaged hemisphere (Olulade et al. 2020), substantiating that there is enhanced ‘linguistic’ neuroplasticity in children that is lost in adults (Kumura 1993; Penfield and Roberts 1966). Also, many faculties of the brain need to be tuned by the environment during a critical period and if missed a faculty will not develop (Fine et al. 2003; Hubel and Wiesel 1977). In the case of language, the first year of life is critical for the establishment of syntax, and other language attributes develop before puberty (Friedmann and Rusou 2015).
As to whether the development of language faculties is largely an unconscious affair is now addressed. In all mammals, the neocortex mediates the storage of declarative information, which depends on consciousness (or thinking) to guide the learning process (Hebb 1949, 1968). Every day while learning to ride a bike my son would ask: “Daddy, are we going to train today?” This question was repeated for months until one day my son’s vestibular system was finally programmed to race around the neighborhood track; years after learning to ride a bike my son had no recollection of how this occurred, which makes one assume that consciousness had little to do with the learning process.
The establishment of an automated state (or an unconscious execution) requires extensive training, even for language. Formal, global education (since the 1950’s) has been central in elevating humankind out of poverty (the proof: travel to Brazil, India, or China today and compare your social experience with what it was like many decades ago, e.g., the 1980’s). To automate a behavior, requires daily training so that circuits between the neocortex and cerebellum can be programmed (which is what putatively happens while learning to ride a bike, Tehovnik, Hasanbegović, Chen 2024; also see Miles and Lisberger 1981). Unlike the neocortex, the cerebellum is responsible for developing the executable motor code for all behaviors, including language. Once the neocortex and cerebellum are tuned for a given behavior, a reduced amount of neural tissue is used to summon a correct response as when engaged in dialogue with a fellow interlocuter (Lehericy et al. 2005; Ojemann 1983). The exchange is so rapid that tens of milliseconds before the completion of a string of utterances, one is prepared to deliver a reply (Levinson and Torreira 2015). Interestingly, patient HM whose hippocampus was destroyed could still engage in rapid conversation, but in the absence of his hippocampus he was unable to update his declarative memories, i.e., he could not learn any new words or new facts and if asked to recall what his mother or father were like he could not narrate the history (Corkin 2002). In short, the unconscious execution of speech entails using a reduced amount of neocortical tissue with the remaining tissue activating cortico-cerebellar loops (Hasanbegović 2024) to maintain a particular state of automaticity. Any upgrades to the cortico-cerebellar loops, however, would require a modification of the efference-copy code at the level of the cerebellum (Bell et al. 1997; Chen 2019; Cullen 2015; De Zeeuw 2021; Fukutomi and Carlson 2020; Loyola et al. 2019; Miles and Lisberger 1981; Noda et al. 1991; Shadmehr 2020; Tehovnik, Patel, Tolias et al. 2021; Wang et al. 2023).
As for Chomsky’s ‘Merge’ to be expressed automatically in children (Chomsky 1965), it would require that the cortico-cerebellar loops be programmed genetically such that all the gains at the Purkinje neurons are able to anticipate a linguistic world with minimal adjustments of the gains once a child begins hearing and making sounds. That all this is finalized syntactically by the age of one, will need to be verified quantitatively using information theory (Tehovnik and Chen 2015).
Without getting into theorizing, my guess is that first language acquistion is an unconscious process in the sense that the baby does not enter acquisition with a conscious decision to learn his/her mother language. Cognitive science introduced the "cognitive unconscious" as a viable process (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). We may want to juxtapose this with second language acquisition, which may be accompanied by motivation to learn as a concious decision or choice.
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