Abstract
One of the central questions that Eric Lenneberg raised in his seminal book, Biological Foundations of Language is: What is the relationship between language comprehension and language production? This paper reviews Lenneberg’s case study of a child with congenital anarthria and then presents the results of two studies that investigate the relationship between phoneme perception and production. The first study investigates the phoneme identification skills of a child with developmental apraxia who, like the anarthric child studied by Lenneberg, had essentially no speech yet had no difficulty understanding speech. The second study investigates the extent to which 28 typically-developing children’s ability to identify phonemes is related to their ability to produce phonemes. The results of both studies support Lenneberg’s conclusion that children’s ability to perceive speech is not dependent on their ability to produce speech. Thus, Lenneberg’s original case study and the two studies presented in this paper argue against gestural theories of speech perception such as the Motor Theory.
Highlights
One of the hallmarks of much of Lenneberg’s work and especially his seminal book Biological Foundations of Language is the importance he placed on the study of language acquisition by special populations and the insights that such populations can provide about the biological bases of language and language acquisition
In Biological Foundations of Language, Lenneberg (1967) went one step further, arguing not just that special populations can provide important insights about language and language acquisition, but that to ignore or overlook [such cases] is inexcusable as it may result in theories that are flatly contradicted by pertinent facts in pathology. (Lenneberg 1967: 304)
The intact language comprehension abilities of Lenneberg’s anarthric child and the dyspraxic child reported in this paper underscore the importance of studying how special populations use and acquire language
Summary
One of the hallmarks of much of Lenneberg’s work and especially his seminal book Biological Foundations of Language is the importance he placed on the study of language acquisition by special populations and the insights that such populations can provide about the biological bases of language and language acquisition. A case in point is the production and perception of speech. It is well established that the articulatory gestures used to produce phonemes vary depending on the speaker, the situation in which speech occurs, and the phonological environment in which the phonemes appear. We are grateful to all of the children who participated in the studies, and the parents, daycare providers and teachers who facilitated us in testing them. We thank Paul deLacy and Shigeto Kawahara for their advice on the design and implementation of the second experiment, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. These studies could not have been conducted without support from the Merck Foundation and the National Science Foundation (BCS-9875168; BCS-0446850)
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