NDLI: The “Globularization Hypothesis” of the Language-ready Brain as a Developmental Frame for Prosodic Bootstrapping Theories of Language Acquisition

Content Provider	PubMed Central
Author	Irurtzun, Aritz
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	In recent research (Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco, 2014a,b) have advanced the hypothesis that our species-specific language-ready brain should be understood as the outcome of developmental changes that occurred in our species after the split from Neanderthals-Denisovans, which resulted in a more globular braincase configuration in comparison to our closest relatives, who had elongated endocasts. According to these authors, the development of a globular brain is an essential ingredient for the language faculty and in particular, it is the centrality occupied by the thalamus in a globular brain that allows its modulatory or regulatory role, essential for syntactico-semantic computations. Their hypothesis is that the syntactico-semantic capacities arise in humans as a consequence of a process of globularization, which significantly takes place postnatally (cf. Neubauer et al., 2010). In this paper, I show that Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco's hypothesis makes an interesting developmental prediction regarding the path of language acquisition: it teases apart the onset of phonological acquisition and the onset of syntactic acquisition (the latter starting significantly later, after globularization). I argue that this hypothesis provides a developmental rationale for the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis of language acquisition (cf. i.a. Gleitman and Wanner, 1982; Mehler et al., 1988, et seq.; Gervain and Werker, 2013), which claim that prosodic cues are employed for syntactic parsing. The literature converges in the observation that a large amount of such prosodic cues (in particular, rhythmic cues) are already acquired before the completion of the globularization phase, which paves the way for the premises of the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis, allowing babies to have a rich knowledge of the prosody of their target language before they can start parsing the primary linguistic data syntactically.
Related Links	http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01817
Starting Page	1817
File Format	PDF
ISSN	16641078
e-ISSN	16641078
Journal	Frontiers in Psychology
Volume Number	6
Language	English
Publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
Publisher Date	2015-12-01
Access Restriction	Open
Rights Holder	Frontiers Media S.A.
Subject Keyword	Research in Higher Education
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Psychology

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

The “Globularization Hypothesis” of the Language-ready Brain as a Developmental Frame for Prosodic Bootstrapping Theories of Language Acquisition

Prosody as an Entry Point into Language Structure in Early Language Acquisition

Quantifying the syntactic bootstrapping effect in verb learning: A meta-analytic synthesis

Mandarin Learners Use Syntactic Bootstrapping in Verb Acquisition

The Prosodic Acquisition Path Hypothesis: Towards explaining variability in L2 acquisition of phonology

Children infer the meaning of novel verbs through morphological bootstrapping

Editorial: Components of the Language-Ready Brain

The shape of the human language-ready brain

Familiar words can serve as a semantic seed for syntactic bootstrapping

The “Globularization Hypothesis” of the Language-ready Brain as a Developmental Frame for Prosodic Bootstrapping Theories of Language Acquisition

Similar Documents

The “Globularization Hypothesis” of the Language-ready Brain as a Developmental Frame for Prosodic Bootstrapping Theories of Language Acquisition

Prosody as an Entry Point into Language Structure in Early Language Acquisition

Quantifying the syntactic bootstrapping effect in verb learning: A meta-analytic synthesis

Mandarin Learners Use Syntactic Bootstrapping in Verb Acquisition

The Prosodic Acquisition Path Hypothesis: Towards explaining variability in L2 acquisition of phonology

Children infer the meaning of novel verbs through morphological bootstrapping

Editorial: Components of the Language-Ready Brain

The shape of the human language-ready brain

Familiar words can serve as a semantic seed for syntactic bootstrapping

The “Globularization Hypothesis” of the Language-ready Brain as a Developmental Frame for Prosodic Bootstrapping Theories of Language Acquisition