LING 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Steven Pinker, Universal Grammar, Noam Chomsky
19 Oct 2015
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Document Summary
The question of language (speech) origin has been obscured by the dominance of n. chomsky, whose theory of innate universal grammar ignored the problem of how this language ability arose. Natural selection plays an important role in the evolution of a design of the language faculty (s. pinker and paul bloom). Advances in brain imaging, neuroscience, and genetics helped researchers to go deeper into our brain and our biological past. 2 million years ago the hominid brain began a period of rapid expansion, including in the primary brain areas associated with producing or processing language . Broca"s area located in the left frontal cortex and. Wernicke"s area located in the left temporal lobe. Foxp2 speech gene , which affects both language and the ability to articulate, was apparently a target of natural selection. This gene may have undergone its final mutation fewer than 100,000 years ago. Fully developed language was in place by at least.
