The Neurology of Syntax: BBS Call for Commentators
Stevan Harnad
harnad at coglit.soton.ac.uk
Mon Mar 8 15:03:14 EST 1999
Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article
*** please see also 5 important announcements about new BBS
policies and address change at the bottom of this message) ***
THE NEUROLOGY OF SYNTAX: LANGUAGE USE WITHOUT BROCA'S AREA
by Yosef Grodzinsky
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please send EMAIL by April 8th to:
bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk
or write to [PLEASE NOTE SLIGHTLY CHANGED ADDRESS]:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
ECS: New Zepler Building
University of Southampton
Highfield, Southampton
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and
commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates.
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection
with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
_____________________________________________________________
THE NEUROLOGY OF SYNTAX: LANGUAGE USE WITHOUT BROCA'S AREA
Yosef Grodzinsky
Department of Psychology
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
and
Aphasia Research Center
Department of Neurology
Boston University School of Medicine
yosef1 at ccsg.tau.ac.il
ABSTRACT: A new view of the functional role of left anterior cortex
in language use is proposed. The experimental record indicates that
most human linguistic abilities are not localized in this region.
In particular, most of syntax (long thought to be there) is not
located in Broca's area and its vicinity (operculum, insula and
subjacent white matter). This cerebral region, implicated in
Broca's aphasia, does have a role in syntactic processing, but a
highly specific one: it is neural home to receptive mechanisms
involved in the computation of the relation between
transformationally moved phrasal constituents and their extraction
sites (in line with the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis). It is also
involved in the construction of higher parts of the syntactic tree
in speech production. By contrast, basic combinatorial capacities
necessary for language processing - e.g., structure building
operations, lexical insertion - are not supported by the neural
tissue of this cerebral region, nor is lexical or combinatorial
semantics.
The dense body of empirical evidence supporting this restrictive
view comes mainly from several angles on lesion studies of syntax
in agrammatic Broca's aphasia. Five empirical arguments are
presented: experiments in sentence comprehension; cross-linguistic
considerations (where aphasia findings from several language types
are pooled together and scrutinized comparatively); grammaticality
and plausibility judgments; real-time processing of complex
sentences; and rehabilitation. Also discussed are recent results
from functional neuroimaging, and from structured observations on
speech production of Broca's aphasics.
Syntactic abilities, nonetheless, are distinct from other cognitive
skills, and represented entirely and exclusively in the left
cerebral hemisphere. Although more widespread in the left
hemisphere than previously thought, they are clearly distinct from
other human combinatorial and intellectual abilities. The
neurological record (based on functional imaging, split-brain and
right-hemisphere damaged patients, as well as patients suffering
from a breakdown of mathematical skills) indicates that language is
a distinct, modularly organized neurological entity. Combinatorial
aspects of the language faculty reside in the human left cerebral
hemisphere, but only the transformational component (or algorithms
that implement it in use) is located in and around Broca's area.
KEYWORDS: agrammatism, aphasia, Broca's area, cerebral localization,
dyscalculia, functional neuroanatomy, grammatical transformation,
modularity, neuroimaging, syntax, trace-deletion.
____________________________________________________________
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide
Web or by anonymous ftp from the US or UK BBS Archive.
Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on
this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the
article.
The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.grodzinsky.html
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.grodzinsky
ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.grodzinsky
To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
or
ftp 128.112.128.1
When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
To show the available files, type:
ls
Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.grodzinsky
When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit
____________________________________________________________
*** FIVE IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS ***
------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) There have been some very important developments in the
area of Web archiving of scientific papers very recently.
Please see:
Science:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/science.html
Nature:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature.html
American Scientist:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/amlet.html
Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://www.chronicle.com/free/v45/i04/04a02901.htm
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(2) All authors in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences are
strongly encouraged to archive all their papers (on their
Home-Servers as well as) on CogPrints:
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/
It is extremely simple to do so and will make all of our papers
available to all of us everywhere at no cost to anyone.
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(3) BBS has a new policy of accepting submissions electronically.
Authors can specify whether they would like their submissions
archived publicly during refereeing in the BBS under-refereeing
Archive, or in a referees-only, non-public archive.
Upon acceptance, preprints of final drafts are moved to the
public BBS Archive:
ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/index.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/
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(4) BBS has expanded its annual page quota and is now appearing
bimonthly, so the service of Open Peer Commentary can now be be
offered to more target articles. The BBS refereeing procedure is
also going to be considerably faster with the new electronic
submission and processing procedures. Authors are invited to submit
papers to:
Email: bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk
Web: http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk
http://bbs.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html
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(5) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review
In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) journal had only
been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because
of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota
will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we
treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.
(Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
impact!).
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