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1.3.10 Generative Grammar and Universal Grammar Theory
The ability to acquire and use language is a species-specific human activity.
Since this book deals with lyrics (Chapter 10) as well as music, it’s fitting, right about now, to have a quick look at the whereabouts and identity of language in the brain.
In the 1950s, the American linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that language was located as a module or system of modules in the brain. Turns out he was right. His work was a turning point in the cognitive revolution and the downfall of behaviourism, the doctrine that humans have blank-slate brains at birth.
According to Chomsky, a generative grammar—a set of language rules—is encoded in the neuronal architecture of the brain, and is present at birth. Brain wiring for generative grammar makes it possible for young children to automatically become fluent in any language they are exposed to, effortlessly, and without the need for adult teaching. Literacy has nothing to do with language learning. Illiterate people worldwide have no difficulty communicating orally at the same grammatical level as those around them.
If you were born in Dodge City but raised from infancy in the Canadian Arctic, you would grow up speaking Inuktitut. If you were born an Inuit in the far north but raised from infancy in Dodge, you would speak English, grow luxuriant flowing hair, and sing Classic Western songs about lost love and horses. With a Kansas accent.