The Neurobiology of Language: Looking Beyond Monolinguals

The publication of Biological Foundations of Language in 1967 by Eric Lenneberg fundamentally changed the way we think about language. Chomsky brought language from the abstract realm of philosophy into the more grounded world of mind, and Lenneberg completed the process by rooting that mental view of language firmly in the brain. Without Lenneberg, it is difficult to imagine the immense amount of research over the past 50 years that has revealed its structure and function, its social and cognitive dimensions, and obviously, its neurobiology. For Chomsky, the biological basis of language was static, based on innate concepts that unfolded with experience and the reference to biology was largely metaphoric: “mental organ”. For Lenneberg, the biological basis of language was real and dynamic. He was the first thinker to seriously understand language as part of human cognition: “[Words] stand for a cognitive process, that is, the act of categorization or the formation of concepts” (Lenneberg, 1967: 365, emphasis in original). This conception of language blossomed over the subsequent decades, leading to more sophisticated accounts of human language that were based on the use of new methodologies that Lenneberg was unlikely to even imagine. The expansion of technology for observing the brain, the explosion in the sheer amount of knowledge that was accumulated about the brain and its function, and the widespread access to these technologies that became available irrevocably changed the way that language research was conducted (Friederici 2017, Kemmerer 2015). Lenneberg’s visionary ideas about the neurobiology of language set the stage for 50 years of exciting and productive study. In parallel with Lenneberg’s developing understanding of language as a biological system, another field began to emerge around the same time. There was growing interest in the process of learning a second language, particularly in adulthood, spawning the field of second-language acquisition (SLA). Much of this research was generated in response to practical needs. A salient example comes from the post-war efforts of The British Council to teach English in various corners of the British Empire by recruiting graduates from the top schools such as Oxford and sending them to distant lands. Armed with little more than intelligence and intuition, many of these teachers thought deeply about their experiences and began