Abstract
From Zero to Fifty: Considerations on Eric Lenneberg’s Biological Foundations of Language and Updates
Highlights
Lenneberg’s (1967) intuitions about what lay ahead in the future are remarkable, some offer almost superhuman prescience
We propose that gene regulatory networks are sufficiently interconnected such that all genes expressed in disease-relevant cells are liable to affect the functions of core disease-related genes and that most heritability can be explained by effects on genes outside core pathways
There is, in my opinion, little doubt that epigenetic processes can explain some differences in rates of maturation and language acquisition but we will have to wait
Summary
Had I been teaching a graduate course in biolinguistics in the years 1968–1975, I would have had the perfect textbook: Eric H. Everything was right in it: general considerations, updated expositions of neuroscience, genetics, developmental biology and, language, beautifully complemented by an appendix by Noam Chomsky. The prudence with which extrapolations are suggested and Lenneberg’s unwavering honesty in pointing out the tentativeness of some suggestions, are a model for us all. I am teaching biolinguistics but so many things have happened in the intervening fifty years that I could not use it as a textbook, possibly with the exception of the last chapter “Toward a biological theory of language development (general summary),” with only some minor additions and clarifications
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