Language module

The language module or language faculty is a hypothetical structure in the human brain which is thought to contain innate capacities for language, originally posited by Noam Chomsky. There is ongoing research into brain modularity in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience, although the current idea is much weaker than what was proposed by Chomsky and Jerry Fodor in the 1980s. In today's terminology, 'modularity' refers to specialisation: language processing is specialised in the brain to the extent that it occurs partially in different areas than other types of information processing such as visual input. The current view is, then, that language is neither compartmentalised nor based on general principles of processing (as proposed by George Lakoff). It is modular to the extent that it constitutes a specific cognitive skill or area in cognition.

The language module or language faculty is a hypothetical structure in the human brain which is thought to contain innate capacities for language, originally posited by Noam Chomsky. There is ongoing research into brain modularity in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience, although the current idea is much weaker than what was proposed by Chomsky and Jerry Fodor in the 1980s. In today's terminology, 'modularity' refers to specialisation: language processing is specialised in the brain to the extent that it occurs partially in different areas than other types of information processing such as visual input. The current view is, then, that language is neither compartmentalised nor based on general principles of processing (as proposed by George Lakoff). It is modular to the extent that it constitutes a specific cognitive skill or area in cognition. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992) The psychological foundations of culture. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 19–136). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trout, J. D. (2001). The biological basis of speech: what to infer from talking to the animals. Psychological Review, 108 (3), 523–549. Vouloumanos, A., Kiehl, K., Werker, J.F., & Liddle, P. (2001). Detecting sounds in the auditory stream: Event-related fMRI evidence for differential activation to speech and non-speech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13 (7), 994–1005. Wang, E., Peach, R. K., Xu, Y., Schneck, M., & Manry, C. (2000). Perception of dynamic acoustic patterns by an individual with unilateral verbal auditory agnosia. Brain and Language, 73, 442–455. Warren, R. M., & Warren, R. P. (1970). Auditory illusions and confusions. Scientific American, 223, 30–36. Warrington, E.K. (1981). Neuropsychological studies of verbal semantic systems. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. Biol. Sci., 295, 411–23. Zeki S. (2005). The Ferrier Lecture 1995 behind the seen: The functional specialization of the brain in space and time. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. Biol. Sci., 360, 1145–83.

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