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SUMMARY:What can developmental language impairment tell us about genetic b
 ases of syntax? - Dorothy Bishop\, University of Oxford\, Department of Ex
 perimental Psychology.
DTSTART:20080129T160000Z
DTEND:20080129T173000Z
UID:TALK10352@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Napoleon Katsos
DESCRIPTION:Some language acquisition experts have questioned whether we n
 eed to posit innate neural specialisation for syntax\, arguing that syntac
 tic competence is an emergent property of the developing brain.  According
  to this view\, specific syntactic deficits in children are the downstream
  consequence of perceptual\, memory or motor impairments affecting systems
  that are implicated in nonlinguistic as well as linguistic processing. Ge
 netic studies of developmental language disorders pose difficulties for th
 is viewpoint\, showing that syntactic deficits are highly heritable\, but 
 are not readily explicable in terms of lower-level perceptual or motor imp
 airments\, and are distinct from limitations of phonological short-term me
 mory.  The data do not support the notion of a single "Grammar Gene"\, but
  rather are compatible with an Adaptationist account which postulates that
  humans evolved a number of neural specialisations that are implicated in 
 language processing. 
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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