cognitive operations necessarily is metaphorical; it does not convey a realistic
account of actual mental activities, and given the total lack of empirical data
from cognitive and neuroscience to support the description, one could easily
conclude that it never can. Taylor (2002) noted in this context that “the theory
has been driven by its own internal logic, not by any considerations deriving
from independently established facts about human cognition” (p. 8).
The Language Faculty
Taylor’s (2002) criticism is not trivial. That humans have a predisposition to
develop and use language is not really debatable. Nor can we deny that this
predisposition—like our bipedalism, for example—is innate. But is the lan-
guage faculty a unique biological function, or is it an amalgam of cognitive
processes that, over evolutionary time, have become integrated for language?
We know that two areas of the brain, Broca’s and Wernicke’s, have significant
responsibility for processing language. Damage to these areas of the left
hemisphere interferes with language production and comprehension, respec-
tively. However, it seems unlikely that they could house Chomsky’s (1995)
language faculty because these areas work in cooperation with others, such as
the cerebral cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, cerebellum, and basal ganglia.
Brain imaging has shown that writing in response to a simple oral prompt, for
example, begins in the auditory cortex, which activates Wernicke’s area,
which in turn activates the angular gyrus.^5
One could make the argument, perhaps, that the connections to other areas of
the brain are ultimately insignificant, that the language faculty is nevertheless cen-
tered in Broca’s area. The argument is problematic for several reasons. Chomsky
(1995) suggested that the sole function of the language faculty is language process-
ing. However, to date there is no evidence that any area of the brain has this sole
function. Grodzinsky (2000) argued that Broca’s area is not even responsible for
syntax but rather is the “neural home to mechanisms” involved in moving phrases
from one location to another (p. 4). Müller, Kleinhans, and Courchesne (2001) and
Müller and Basho (2004) found that Broca’s area is regularly involved in
“nonlinguistic processes” associated with visuo- and audiomotor functions.
In addition, a large body of brain imaging research indicates that
bilinguals have two distinct areas for language processing (Bhatnagar,
Mandybur, Buckingham, & Andy, 2000; Dehaene, 1999; Fabbro, 2001;
192 CHAPTER 5
(^5) Such imaging studies are not without their own problems. As Fabbro (2001) pointed out, in a great
deal of research “brain activation was studied with tasks that are too complex ... and whose linguistic and
pragmatic nature is still scarcely known; these tasks generally simultaneously activate many linguistic,
pragmatic, and affective structures, thus making it difficult to interpret data” (p. 216).