[neuroling] Re: Genetics of Language
- From: Joseph Hilferty <hilferty@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: neuroling@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 07:17:48 +0100
giancarlo wrote:
>Furthermore, if the *pruning tree hypothesis* (= agrammatics cannot build
>and use a syntactic tree) is well founded, then this type of aphasia cannot
>be language-specific: in every language the affected tool would be the
>construction of the tree itself.
>
It's unclear that this is what's really going on. I'm not a neurolinguist
myself, but it is well-known that Broca's aphasics can make above-
chance grammaticality judgments on lots of constructions, even if
they cannot produce these same constructions. Grodzinsky's
provocative work has identified a subset of constructions that seem
to pose a problem for Broca's individuals. Nonetheless, his approach
has been criticized on a number of fronts (for lots and lots of scrutiny,
see Grodzinsky, Yosef & commentators. 2000. The Neurology of
Syntax: Language Use Without Broca’s Area. Behavioral and Brain
Sciences 23(1): 1–71).
Joe Hilferty
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