Genes and domain specificity.
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Aptitude↗
Biomedical subjects
Gary F Marcus
Publications and source records attributed to Gary F Marcus.
Roots, stems, and the universality of lexical representations: evidence from Hebrew.
Is the structure of lexical representations universal, or do languages vary in the fundamental ways in which they represent lexical information? Here, we consider a touchstone case: whether Semitic languages require a special morpheme, the consonantal root. In so doing, we explore a well-known constraint on the location of identical consonants that has often been used as motivation for root representations in Semitic languages: Identical consonants frequently occur at the end of putative roots (e.g., skk), but rarely occur in their beginning (e.g., ssk). Although this restriction has traditionally been stated over roots, an alternative account could be stated over stems, a representational entity that is found more widely across the world's languages. To test this possibility, we investigate the acceptability of a single set of roots, manifesting identity initially, finally or not at all (e.g., ssk versus skk versus rmk) across two nominal paradigms: CéCeC (a paradigm in which identical consonants are rare) and CiCúC (a paradigm in which identical consonants are frequent). If Semitic lexical representations consist of roots only, then similar restrictions on consonant co-occurrence should be observed in the two paradigms. Conversely, if speakers store stems, then the restriction on consonant co-occurrence might be modulated by the properties of the nominal paradigm (be it by means of statistical properties or their grammatical sources). Findings from rating and lexical decision experiments with both visual and auditory stimuli support the stem hypothesis: compared to controls (e.g., rmk), forms with identical consonants (e.g., ssk, skk) are less acceptable in the CéCeC than in the CiCúC paradigm. Although our results do not falsify root-based accounts, they strongly raise the possibility that stems could account for the observed restriction on consonantal identity. As such, our results raise fresh challenge to the notion that different languages require distinct sets of representational resources.
Humans↗
Cognitive architecture and descent with modification.
Against a background of recent progress in developmental neuroscience, some of which has been taken as challenging to the modularity hypothesis of , this article contrasts two competing conceptions of modularity: sui generis modularity, according to which modules are treated as independent neurocognitive entities that owe nothing to one another, and descent-with-modification modularity, according to which current cognitive modules are understood to be shaped by evolutionary changes from ancestral cognitive modules. I argue that sui generis modularity is incompatible with a range of data, from the co-occurrence of deficits to the patterns of activation in neuroimaging studies, but that same range of data is compatible with descent-with-modification modularity. Furthermore, I argue that the latter conception of modularity may have important implications for the practice and conception of fields such as developmental disorders and linguistics.
Biological Evolution↗
Language: startling starlings.
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Acoustic Stimulation↗
The eloquent ape: genes, brains and the evolution of language.
The human capacity to acquire complex language seems to be without parallel in the natural world. The origins of this remarkable trait have long resisted adequate explanation, but advances in fields that range from molecular genetics to cognitive neuroscience offer new promise. Here we synthesize recent developments in linguistics, psychology and neuroimaging with progress in comparative genomics, gene-expression profiling and studies of developmental disorders. We argue that language should be viewed not as a wholesale innovation, but as a complex reconfiguration of ancestral systems that have been adapted in evolutionarily novel ways.
Animal Communication↗
From semantics to syntax and back again: argument structure in the third year of life.
An essential part of the human capacity for language is the ability to link conceptual or semantic representations with syntactic representations. On the basis of data from spontaneous production, suggested that young children acquire such links on a verb-by-verb basis, with little in the way of a general understanding of linguistic argument structure. Here, we suggest that a receptive understanding of argument structure--including principles linking syntax and conceptual/semantic structure--appears earlier. In a forced-choice pointing task we have shown that toddlers in the third year of life can map a single scene (involving a novel causative action paired with a novel verb) onto two distinct syntactic frames (transitive and intransitive). This suggests that even before toddlers begin generalizing argument structure in their own speech, they have some representation of conceptual/semantic categories, syntactic categories, and a system that links the two.
Child Language↗
Are there limits to statistical learning?
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Animals↗
Does Broca's play by the rules?
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Frontal Lobe↗
The scope of linguistic generalizations: evidence from Hebrew word formation.
Does the productive use of language stem from the manipulation of mental variables (e.g. "noun", "any consonant")? If linguistic constraints appeal to variables, rather than instances (e.g. "dog", "m"), then they should generalize to any representable novel instance, including instances that fall beyond the phonological space of a language. We test this prediction by investigating a constraint on the structure of Hebrew roots. Hebrew frequently exhibits geminates (e.g. ss) in its roots, but it strictly constraints their location: geminates are frequent at the end of the root (e.g. mss), but rare at its beginning (e.g. ssm). Symbolic accounts capture the ban on root-initial geminates as *XXY, where X and Y are variables that stand for any two distinct consonants. If the constraint on root structure appeals to the identity of abstract variables, then speakers should be able to extend it to root geminates with foreign phonemes, including phonemes with foreign feature values. We present findings from three experiments supporting this prediction. These results suggest that a complete account of linguistic processing must incorporate mechanisms for generalization outside the representational space of trained items. Mentally-represented variables would allow speakers to make such generalizations.
Adult↗