Tom Wolfe’s 2016 article in Harper’s, The Origins of Speech, mentions Chomsky's idea of a language organ as explaining the emergence of language. Are there arguments based on principle, linguistics, mathematics, physics, physiology and science in general that the idea of a language organ is wrong? Are there arguments in support?
Dear Robert,
I can recommend you to read this article https://spzwww.uni-muenster.de/griesha/pub/tdaz-eri.pdf . It´s a very good introduction to this topic (see pages 4-7).
The article you mention is deeply flawed. You can find lots of responses to it on linguistics blogs like Faculty of Language (mainly from Norbert Hornstein) and Language Log.
Also note that the question of whether or not there is Universal Grammar is separate from the question of whether or not there is a specific brain structure that subserves grammar and only grammar.
Dear Michaela,
Is there an English translation of the article you recommended Robert?
Thank you
Jorge
Chomsky never refers to a language "organ"; rather a language capacity that evolved as a component of the mind. I agree with Stephen Politzer-Ahles on his recommendation of the Faculty of Language blog ( http://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.com/ ).
In support of Gabriele Scheler, it is well established that different languages are stored by different neurons in the cerebral cortex as demonstrated by electrical brain stimulation (Ojemann 1983,1991).
Ojemann, G.A., 1983. Brain organization for language from the perspective of electrical stimulation mapping. Behavioral Brain Sciences 6, 189-230.
Ojemann, G.A., 1991. Cortical organization of language. Journal of Neuroscience 11, 2281-2287.
During both speech and birdsong the vocal motor output must be continuously monitored for errors via auditory feedback (Bolhuis et al. 2010). Once an error is encountered corrections are made to modify the efferents copy (or memory) of the motor response. Thus the process that subserves sensorimotor behavior was not created anew to subserve vertebrate communication (cf. Andersen et al. 1985; Bolhuis et al. 2010; Goldberg and Bruce 1990; Schiller and Tehovnik 2015); therefore, the neural operations of movement and language should be universal at least within vertebrates.
References
Andersen RA, Essick GK, Siegel RM (1985) Encoding of spatial location by posterior parietal neurons. Science 230:456-458.
Bolhuis JJ, Okanoya K, Scharff C (2010) Twitter evolution: converging mechanisms in birdsong and human speech. Nature Reviews Neurosci 11: 747-759.
Goldberg ME, Bruce CJ (1990) Primate frontal eye fields. III. Maintenance of a spatially accurate saccade signal. J Neurophysiol 64:489-508.
Schiller PH, Tehovnik EJ (2015) The Visual System and Vision. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 1-390.
Dear Stephen Politzer-Ahles and Joseph Perry.
Thank you for your references to the Faculty of Language Blog which I looked at. Are there any other rebuttals to the Harper's article by Wolfe you can refer me to?
Thank you.
Bob Shour
It seems to me that there exists a mental faculty for grammatical comprehension which draws upon different parts of the brain rather than a distinct grammatical organ.
Hello,
The view that the knowledge of a natural language is initiated and triggered by a biologically determined capacity specific , which is unique to human beings, has a long established history. In point of fact, the degree of profound similarity among human languages provides support for the idea that they all result from are a common human faculty known as language acquisition device (LAD). Like the body, the brain too consists of various organs one of which is of course language.As such, the language faculty has properties typical of a bodily organ, a specialized structure which is capable of carrying out a particular function. Naturally, the language organ involves complex interface units which interact with other mental organs comprising the human cognition. The following link can hopefully provide you with more details concerning the issue.
https://cowgill.ling.yale.edu/sra/organ.pdf
Best regards,
R. Biria
Robert Shour: With respect to Wolfe's article, please see https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/tom-wolfe-denial-language-evolution-stumbles-over-his-own-words in Science news. Wolfe has a history of antagonism with Chomsky, mostly focused on non-scientific matters. Given the sloppiness of his arguments, I am tempted to think that he has chosen to write on this topic just to be a gadfly.
For every human beings with our birth we all have bought resulting fruits positive & negative both from our earlier previous lives .We are also aware that we all have a positive & negative traits & as human beings what we are forming our presentation as a human being in the line with our traits .
In view of this human beings are not equal . We all are aware that our standing as a human being & depend mostly on our Head, Mind ,Brain, with our Conscious mind & inner urge & divinity within us for carrying out our action of our lifeline & in the above line the question of grammar organ has been in every human beings a life partner of life .
This is my personal opinion
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