Biological Basis for Language Has Essay

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The only part of the human body that can really be said to be devoted to speech in a way totally unique to humans is the brain. There are language centers in the human brain that researchers have yet to find any analogs for in other animals. This supports Noam Chomsky's assertion that language did not simply evolve from animal calls. There are, it is true, all of the biological mechanisms required for speech in many other animals, but language is capable of much more than simply making sounds or even communicating. Language can imagine the future, and express ideas that do not necessarily pertain to the current situation. The difference between the language of humans and the communication abilities of animals, as it is not physically based, must be neurologically based, and research both into human and animal brains and a careful examination of language supports this theory.

Chomsky, perhaps our era's greatest linguist -- though also accused of exaggerating evidence -- claims that there is a "universal grammar" to all languages, and theorizes that this is programmed into our DNA. Chomsky does not go so far as to deny the environmental aspects of language acquisition, but he claims that there are biological consistencies in all humans that enable them to learn and reproduce language.

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There is also neurological evidence for much of Chomsky's theory. Dr. R. Joseph has found that a variety of complex structures of neurons and pathways in the brain are devoted to understanding and producing language, both in the imaginative aspects and in the control of the speech apparatus. He has even found that the two sides of the brain are specialized in the way they respond to language -- the left hemisphere deals with the actual meaning of language while the right deals with emotive sounds and inflections to extract meaning. As this differentiation is uniquely human, it is clear that there is a biological basis for language and speech.

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