Language, the mind and everything
An interview with Professor Sydney Lamb
Keywords:
Relational Network Theory, Neurocognitive linguistics, language structure, human cognitionAbstract
Research into how the brain organizes language has focused almost exclusively on the location of linguistic functions, leaving aside the more interesting questions of what happens in those locations and how linguistic information is represented. The reason for this is that questions about location are easier to address, through aphasiology and neuroimaging. However, there is abundant empirical evidence, both linguistic and neurological, that provides answers to the more fundamental questions. This evidence strongly supports a connectivist conception of linguistic information rather than a conception in which the brain stores symbols as such. Characterizations of language in terms of a repository of symbols are incompatible with neuroanatomical evidence and require impossible assumptions about how the brain works. In contrast, Relational Network Theory, which is one version of connectivism, provides an explanation of brain processes that is consistent not only with numerous details of cortical anatomy and function but also with quantitative estimates of cortical capacity.
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