8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A spy-story between brain and language, February 7, 2010
This review is from: The Boundaries of Babel: The Brain and the Enigma of Impossible Languages (Current Studies in Linguistics) (Hardcover)
This book is truly fascinating. I didn't know before what modern linguistics was about neither did I know a lot about neuropsychology. This book really takes you through the two domains, as in a fascinating story, and finally uncovers a surprising link between the core structure of human languages, namely syntax, and the brain.
One of the aspects that I really appreciated of Moro's book is that he never cheats on any major issue or tries to hide the problems behind them. He is surely aware that the human brain is an immensely complex organ and the structure of grammars hasn't even been discovered yet. Nevertheless, although this might have stopped many from further research, he undertook this challenge and arrived at the interesting conclusion that the absence of certain types of grammar among the languages of the world cannot be the result of convention or historical accident. Learning an "Impossible" language does not activate the usual neuronal net which is involved for language; thus, the structure of grammar cannot be independent of the brain structure. All this was discovered by him and the group or researchers he works with by assembling ideas and materials that goes back to the foundations of linguistics and neuropsychology: thus the book also qualifies as a direct testimony of a discovery in science.
I have also found the book very clear and, sometimes, similar to the way a spy-story is written rather than a scientific essay. The only remarks is the last chapter, that the author recognizes as somewhat peripheric. It seems to me more like a window open on future research rather then the report of achieved accomplishments. Still, it was fun to read. I would recommend it to anyone interested in language and the brain.
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2 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
She remains at the surface of things, May 1, 2009
This review is from: The Boundaries of Babel: The Brain and the Enigma of Impossible Languages (Current Studies in Linguistics) (Hardcover)
Andrea Moro remains absolutely dependent on the linear surface of language though she is conscious it is only a super-imposed structural obligation into which the deeper hierarchical structure has to be cast. She does not see that concepts like ¡°subject¡± and ¡°object¡± are directly informed ¨C and imposed ¨C by that linear surface and that it short-circuits a deeper functional syntax she never reaches. She starts from two axioms that block her going deeper.
The first axiom is that the linguistic ability is innate and that it has to be connected with the biological structure of the brain. She never considers the phylogenetic process that made humanity invent communication. She takes for granted that language exists fully formed before anything else and that the structure of the brain is absolutely stable, what's more that the functioning of the brain is.
But at this level of the brain she never examines its neuronal architecture: the connections that may be built or may not be built among the neurones, connections that are not linearized: many neurones can be connected and active at the same time, explaining language is not one zone in the brain but always networks of activated areas, even if the Broca's area is always active. She knows that and she does not exploit it. The second axiom is the particular formal visual model she uses to formalize the syntax of a language.
This model, inherited from universal grammar, contains a linear binary organization shown in a hierarchical visual disposition. She then concludes that the two elements are inherently connected. She embedded her conclusion in her initial model. What can we do? We must imagine how the human race developed verbal communication. We probably can find some ideas from how a child captures verbal communication. This requires three elements.
First, the brain is activated by stimuli and that it is highly hierarchized, functional and non-linear. Second, the functional structure in which a new-born child (who has already integrated in its memory a lot of sounds and sound clusters from the twenty-fourth week of his mother's pregnancy onwards) is plunged in order to survive, hence to satisfy his physiological needs. She does not take into account that the eyes see the world upside down and right side left, which is in contradiction with the orientation of sounds. Nor that the first cry of the new-born child will bring a satisfaction to the needs of the child who will from here build a pattern: need ¡ú cry ¡ú feeder/food ¡ú satisfaction. The child builds his verbal communication on this basis, borrowing sounds and ¡°words¡± from his ¡°feeder(s)¡±. This matrix will yield the structure of our personal reference system: Feed-ee (1st) ¡ú feeding (process) ¡ú food (3rd neuter) / feed-er (2nd: family 2nd1 ¨C creche 2nd2 or vice versa) ¡ú beyond (3rd), hence three persons, plus a non-person.
From this situation space is seen as continuous and time as discontinuous. For a long time space will be here and there and moving from the one to the other (family home versus creche) and time will be the memory of past satisfaction, the feeling of present need, and the call for future satisfaction without the possibility to revisit the past or appropriate the future. At this point the (syntactico-semantic) functions that are not yet nominalized or verbalized are essentially simultaneous.
The language of the child is built from there, always keeping in mind this complex pattern: a source is also a goal and vice versa. Only the object that satisfies the need is one in function. The source is the sender of the cry and the goal is the sendee of the cry, and the cry aims at building an inverted situation in which the sendee of the cry becomes the satisfier (the bringer of the food-theme) of the need and the sender of the cry the satisfiee of the need, and that with the exchange of this food-theme.
Always a two-level ternary relation: sender ¨C cry ¨C sendee // satisfiee ¨C food ¨C satisfier, or source-theme-goal // goal-theme-source. That is universal and in phase with the brain. That is what phylogenetically produced language and what psychogenetically produces language. Then we come to the third element: the verbalization of this complex pattern: to build categories like noun, verb and valence; agent, patient and theme; source, goal and location; etc. The copula is quite premature at this moment since the child must be conscious of his existence to be, and he cannot be without setting his existence as being differentiated from that of the other/others around him leading to another hierarchy again that is not binary.
That's why I say that the systematically twofold binary hierarchy of Andrea Moro's tree is wrong. This hierarchy has to be at least ternary. Antoine Culioli is right for the basic structure that is ternary. Jackendoff or Saumjan are right too provided we get Jackendoff's functional categories into Saumjan's algebra, both being syntactic, not semantic or discursive. Then there is some hope that we may be able to come to an articulation with the brain because all that is captured and built by the brain, and all that builds the brain at the same time in its neuronal connections.
There remains that the brain works in networks (simultaneous multiple connections) and final language is linearized. Then we can understand the linguistic ability of human beings who always have full visions in the mind and a linear realization on the lips. It is between mind and lips that the mind invents the various linguistic solutions. But then the concepts of symmetry, antisymmetry and even dynamic antisymmetry are superficial and very shallow, I mean at the sole level of the lips.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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