The Modularity Issue in Language Acquisition: A Rapprochement? Comments on Gallistel and Chomsky

Abstract

Chomsky (in this issue) and Gallistel (in this issue) review work on human language and on spatial cognition in animals, arguing that these skills are each supported by a specialized cognitive module with its own unique organization principles, different in kind from other aspects of cognition. In this commentary, I outline a contrasting non-modular (or semi-modular) view of human language and suggest that such an alternative is consistent with the arguments made by Chomsky and Gallistel and is equally plausible, given our present state of knowledge; and I suggest several directions for future research that are needed to determine which of the alternatives provides a better account of the architecture of high level cognition.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Noam Chomsky and Randy Gallistel for their stimulating papers; to Dan Swingley for organizing the Society for Language Development Symposium; and to Ernie Nordeen, Florian Jaeger, Jeff Runner, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Lila Gleitman, and Dick Aslin for their detailed comments on this paper and their thoughtful and stimulating discussion of these issues over many years. Supported in part by NIH grants DC00167 and HD37082.

Notes

¹In broad strokes, this is like the position articulated by Liberman (1970), who suggested that grammar is the outcome of the mismatch between the structure of thought and the workings of the mouth and ear—that grammar is the system that links these two very different types of structure and process to one another.