3 ms·

I think you may be confusing the hardwiring effects of a particular embodiment (birds have a syrinx, humans have a larynx) with a neural predisposition to parti

• jsenn 4y ago
  No, there really is a neural predisposition to language--not particular sounds, but language. I looked at the Wikipedia page on feral children. Many in fact do learn language when they're rescued. The ones that don't may bark like a dog, but that's not something that requires a language faculty! That said, there is as you say an example of a boy raised in a room with birds and neglected (not exposed to human language) who did in fact chirp and flap his arms like wings! This isn't relevant to the point I was making above though. If the language faculty were not hard-wired, then normal children would be just as likely to display these behaviours as to speak their parents' native language. As far as I know that happens in not 1 percent or 1 tenth of a percent, but in 0 percent of cases. To me, this indicates a hard-wired tendency, rather than a perfectly general system with some optimizations or soft predispositions.