Book review

Language, Mind and Brain

Dabrowksa, Ewa. 2004. Language, Mind and Brain: Some Psychological and Neurological Constraints on Theories of Grammar. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Reviewed by: Ren Zhang, School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University

In their day-to-day practice, few linguists have got a chance to break away from their favored way of doing linguistic analysis and question the deep foundational assumptions in their theoretical background. Such effort would take not only courage, but a lot of acuity and a broad range of knowledge. Such qualities are what I have seen in Ewa Dabrowska's new book Language, Mind and Brain. Dabrowska integrates an amazing range of recent findings from language processing, acquisition, impairment, comparative psychology and genetics that, taken together, provide rather straightforward and substantial support to the cognitive-constructional approaches to grammar.

In addition to a brief introduction, the book comprises two parts, titled "The Basic Specifications" and "The Building Blocks of Language", respectively. Part 1 is composed of five chapters, which develop a set of "design specifications" for a psychologically realistic linguistic theory. This section starts with the apparently paradoxical properties of language processing, namely, incredible speed and flexibility in tackling enormously complex puzzles in speech production and understanding. And all this can be accomplished in the human brain, which is a fairly slow processor compared with most modern computers. Such facts can only be understood, according to the author, by referring to the brain's capacity for parallel computation and using processing shortcuts, including storage of prefabricated units, shallow processing and sensitivity to frequency at all levels of linguistic organization. Thus instead of being economical, linguistic knowledge must be highly redundantly represented in the mind.

The next chapter tears down arguments for innate UG based on the apparent universal and uniform stages of language acquisition by stressing huge individual differences and the role of input in language development, even in cases of inauspicious circumstances such as those of blind children. Empirical facts therefore suggest that languages are learned, not acquired. In Chapter 4, the author brings in evidence from impairment studies showing that the classical strict localization view widely accepted in neurolinguistics cannot be maintained. Lexical and grammatical knowledge are rather closely intertwined and redundantly represented in a flexible architecture. The issue of impairment is further pursued in the next chapter, as it has too often been cited in the form of a double dissociation argument for the modularity hypothesis, namely, the impairment of language and general cognitive processes may happen independently of one another. The author carefully reexamines the classical cases that support the dissociation argument and points out the partialness in dissociation. It is suggested that different cognitive skills and abilities are implicated in language processing and acquisition to varying extent. The last chapter in this part examines neuroanatomical evidence for the so-called "language organ" and the status of Universal Grammar. The author concurs with the recent consensus that the human adaptations to language involve abilities evolved for other purposes.

Part 2 develops the basic specifications in more concrete detail in relation to specific aspects of linguistic organization. In Chapter 7, the author reexamines the arguments for an innate syntax module by looking at lexical acquisition of spatial terms. She highlights the rather sophisticated nature of lexical learning, which, however, is accomplished in a quick and spontaneous fashion without relying on innate lexical knowledge. By analogy, the author argues, syntax as well might be learnable without being innate. The nature of regular and irregular morphology is the concern of the next chapter, which is an issue that splits the connectionist and the dual-mechanism approaches. The author discusses evidence for the dual-mechanism model and pinpoints various problems in its argumentation. It is suggested that the same mechanism could in principle account for speakers' ability to supply regular and irregular inflections. Chapter 9 brings developmental data to bear on the notion of the lexicon-grammar continuum and presents rich evidence for a developmental course that starts with rote-learned formulas on the basis of which increasingly general formulaic frames and abstract templates are extracted. A detailed demonstration of this view is offered on the acquisition of English interrogative constructions, showing that lexically specific templates play an important role in both simple and long-distance dependency questions. The final chapter in this section introduces the basic principles of Cognitive Grammar as a psychologically realistic framework that meets the specifications discussed earlier.

The basic arguments and ideas in the book are organized in a way that underscores major differences with the mainstream generative positions. This way of presentation is of course quite familiar from the literature of cognitive linguistics. However, the strength of this work lies in its comprehensiveness and currentness, as shown in many of its fairly recent references. From the book, one could come away with a clear picture of the central issues under debate in language and cognition at this time in the 21st century, as well as the author's well-argued interpretation of the major findings on those issues. In addition, Dabrowska shows careful balance in her discussion of various positions. Much interesting evidence is provided that often helps the reader to rethink some of the commonly held assumptions in linguistics.

The only quibble I might have regards the weight the author assigns to the discussion of specific linguistic issues, which probably is a direct reflection of the author's rich experience in language acquisition research. The stated goal of the work, as reflected in its subtitle, is to discuss psychological and neurological constraints on theories of grammar. But theoretical matters in grammatical theories per se appear to have been given short shrift. Apart from a quick introduction to the basics of Cognitive Grammar, there is no substantial discussion of alternative theoretical approaches to specific issues in grammatical representation, though I do find points of delight in the author's discussion of long-distance dependency constructions from the perspectives of acquisition and production. As a practicing linguist, I would have been happier if I were more enlightened on how specific linguistic phenomena might be better approached under the assumption of the cognitive constraints discussed in the book. Nonetheless, with its overall clarity in the presentation of many cutting-edge research findings, the book will serve as a very good introduction to the empirical and cognitive foundations of construction grammars that will surely benefit beginning students in psycholinguistics and theoretical linguists at large.

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