Schedule StuTS 70

Is language a unique cognitive capacity, or can it be explained in terms of more general computational mechanisms of the human brain?
The presentation aims to tackle this debate by giving a talk reviewing important literature, followed by a panel discussion in which a set of prepared questions as well as questions that emerge in the course of the event will be addressed.

For decades the predominant paradigm in linguistic research was that language is a uniquely human phenomenon. The reasons for that assumption are obvious – no other species can manipulate signs and thereby communicate in a way as complex and sophisticated as humans do. In line with this observation was the dominating view that language is not only unique to humans, but unique in general. That is, it was proposed that language does not form part of general cognition, but is has to be seen as a separate mental capacity, a linguistic module of the mind, if you will (Fodor, 1983).

As science progressed, learning mechanisms were discovered that suggested that there might be, to some extent at least, more general processes at play when acquiring language (see, e.g., Marcus et al., 1999; Saffran et al., 1996). Also, in the fields of comparative cognition findings suggested potential parallels between animal learning mechanisms and human linguistic capacities (Fitch, 2018). Further, from an evolutionary point of view, humans stand out in that they show an disproportionally increased size of association cortex compared to primates (Krienen & Buckner, 2020; Mars et al., 2017), potentially suggesting that they have more capacities to process complex computations. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on whether language has to be considered a unique set of computational processes unique to the human species or whether our ability to process language arises from more general cognitive capacities (see, e.g., Behme & Deacon, 2008; Chomsky, 2011).

The aim of this talk and discussion is not to give finite answers to the debate – it would be foolish to even claim that such answers existed. Rather, my intention is to, by reviewing important literature, opening a discussion. The aim is to discuss viewpoints from different perspectives and linguistic disciplines, share knowledge and experiences and maybe to elaborate potential questions and approaches to tackle this thrilling and important topic in innovative ways.

Info

Day: 2021-11-20
Start time: 15:00
Duration: 01:00
Room: 🧉
Track: Diverse
Language: en

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