Eric Heinz Lenneberg (1921–1975), a neuroscientist and linguist born in Düsseldorf, published his masterpiece Biological Foundations of Language in 1967. This book, now recognized as a classic in the field, inaugurated the scientific study of the biology of language, and has since its publication exerted an enormous influence. However, some interpretations of this work do not accurately capture the author’s biological and linguistic thinking. Here I concentrate on one such interpretation, that of leading generative acquisitionist Kenneth Wexler (1942-), who has formulated what he terms ‘Lenneberg’s dream’, portraying Lenneberg as believing that a trait like language is directly rooted in the genome. The present paper will show that Lenneberg’s view was in fact quite different from that assumed by Wexler. First, while the latter author explicitly adopts the genocentric stance that has characterized generative grammar since its very inception, the former relativized the role of genes and rejected the genome as the direct source of language. Second, Wexler’s position can be shown to be preformationist, assuming the genome to contain a specific program for language; Lenneberg, in contrast, never embraced that position and instead adopted an opposite, epigenesist stance. In sum, Lenneberg dreamt a completely different dream.
It is not strictly correct to speak of genes for long ears, for auditory acuity, or for the capacity for language (Lenneberg 1967: 241).
References
Amundson, Ron
2007The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought: Roots of Evo-Devo. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, Stephen R. & David Lightfoot
2002The Language Organ: Linguistics as cognitive physiology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bateson, Patrick
2001 “Behavioral Development and Darwinian Evolution”. Cycles of Contingencies. Developmental systems and evolution ed. by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray, 149–166. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Benítez Burraco, Antonio & Víctor M. Longa
2011 “El papel del ADN fósil en Paleoantropología: FOXP2, Neandertales y lenguaje”. Zephyrus: Revista de Prehistoria y Arqueología LXVII.45–68.
Benítez Burraco, Antonio, & Víctor M. Longa
2012 “On the inference ‘Neanderthals had FOXP2 = they had complex language”. The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference (EVOLANG9) ed. by Thomas C. Scott-Phillips, Mónica Tamariz, Erica A. Cartmill & James R. Hurford, 50–57. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.
Berwick, Robert C. & Noam Chomsky
2016Why Only Us. Language and Evolution. Cambridge, Mss.: MIT Press.
Berwick, Robert C., Angela D. Friederici, Noam Chomsky & Johan J. Bolhuis
2013 “Evolution, Brain, and the Nature of Language”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17:2.89–98.
Bialystok, Ellen & Judith F. Kroll
In press. “The Neurobiology of language: looking beyond monolinguals”. Biolinguistics 11.
Blumberg, Mark S.
2005Basic Instinct. The Genesis of Behavior. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Boeckx, Cedric & Víctor M. Longa
2011 “Lenneberg’s Views on Language Development and Evolution and their Relevance for Modern Biolinguistics”. Biolinguistics 5:3.254–273.
Borer, Hagit & Kenneth Wexler
1987 “The Maturation of Syntax”. Parameter Setting ed. by Thomas Roeper & Edwin Williams, 123–172. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Borer, Hagit & Kenneth Wexler
1992 “Bi-Unique Relations and the Maturation of Grammatical Principles”. NLLT 10.147–189.
Brown, Eric R.
1975 “Eric H. Lenneberg”. Foundations of Language Development: A multidisciplinary approach, vol. I ed. by Eric H. Lenneberg & Elizabeth Lenneberg, v–vi. New York: Academic Press.
Brown, Roger W. & Eric H. Lenneberg
1954 “A Study in Language and Cognition”. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 49.454–462.
Carroll, Sean B.
2005Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The new science of Evo Devo and the making of the animal kingdom. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Catlin, Jack
1978 “Discussion of the Papers by Stolzenberg and Chomsky”. Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought: Essays in honor of Eric Lenneberg ed. by George A. Miller & Elizabeth Lenneberg, 271–280. New York: Academic Press.
Chomsky, Noam
1965Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam
1966Cartesian Linguistics: A chapter in the history of rationalist thought. New York: Harper & Row. [Quoted from the 2nd ed. by James McGilvray. Christchurch, New Zealand: Cybereditions 2002.]
Chomsky, Noam
1976 “On the Biological Basis of Linguistic Capacities”. The Neuropsychology of Language: Essays in honor of Eric Lenneberg ed. by Robert W. Rieber, 1–24. New York: Plenum Press.
Chomsky, Noam
1980Rules and Representations. New York: Columbia University Press.
Chomsky, Noam
2004 “The Biolinguistic Perspective after 50 Years”. Quaderni del Dipartamento di Linguistica, Universitá di Firenze 14.3–12.
Chomsky, Noam
2005 “Three Factors in Language Design”. Linguistic Inquiry 36:1.1–22.
Chomsky, Noam
2007 “Approaching UG from below”. Interfaces + Recursion = Language? Chomsky’s minimalism and the view from syntax-semantics ed. by Uli Sauerland & Hans-Martin Gärtner, 1–29. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Chomsky, Noam
2009 “Opening Remarks”. Of Minds & Language: A dialogue with Noam Chomsky in the Basque Country ed. by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Juan Uriagereka & Pello Salaburu, 13–43. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, Noam
2011 “Language and Other Cognitive Systems: What is special about language?”. Language Learning and Development 7.263–278.
Crain, Stephen & Rosalind Thornton
1998Investigations in Universal Grammar: A guide to experiments on the acquisition of syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Davidson, Eric H.
2006The Regulatory Genome: Gene regulatory networks in development and evolution. Burlington, Mass.: Academic Press.
Di Sciullo, Anna Maria & Cedric Boeckx
2011 “Introduction: Contours of the biolinguistic research agenda”. The Biolinguistic Enterprise: New perspectives on the evolution and nature of the human language faculty ed. by Anna Maria Di Sciullo & Cedric Boeckx, 1–16. New York: Oxford University Press.
Di Sciullo, Anna Maria, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Kenneth Wexler, Robert C. Berwick, Cedric Boeckx, Lyle Jenkins, Juan Uriagereka, Karin Stromswold, Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng, Heidi Harley, Andrew Wedel, James McGilvray, Elly van Gelderen & Thomas G. Bever
2010 “The Biological Nature of Human Language”. Biolinguistics 4.4–34.
Dobzhansky, Theodosius
1937Genetics and the Origin of Species. New York: Columbia University Press.
Fisher, Simon E. & Sonja C. Vernes
2015 “Genetics and the Language Sciences”. Annual Review of Linguistics 1.289–310.
Fitch, W. Tecumseh
In press. “What Would Lenneberg Think? Biolinguistics in the third millennium”. Biolinguistics 11.
Fodor, Jerry & Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
2010What Darwin Got Wrong. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Fortis, Jean-Michel
2006 “Lenneberg, Eric H. (1921–1975). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 2nd ed. by Keith Brown, vol. VII, 43–44. Oxford: Elsevier.
Geschwind, Norman
1965a “Disconnexion Syndromes in Animals and Man. Part I”. Brain 88.237–295.
Geschwind, Norman
1965b “Disconnexion Syndromes in Animals and Man. Part II”. Ibid., pp. 585–644.
2003 “Developmental Genetics”. Keywords & Concepts in Evolutionary Developmental Biology ed. by Brian K. Hall & Wendy M. Olson, 68–74. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Goodwin, Brian
1994How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The evolution of complexity. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Gottlieb, Gilbert
1997Synthesizing Nature-Nurture: Prenatal roots of instinctive behavior. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gottlieb, Gilbert
2001 “A Developmental Psychobiological Systems View: Early formulation and current status”. Cycles of Contingencies: Developmental systems and evolution ed. by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray, 41–54. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Gottlieb, Gilbert
2003 “On Making Behavioral Genetics Truly Developmental”. Human Development 46.337–355.
Gould, Stephen Jay & Richard C. Lewontin
1979 “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme”. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B: Biological Sciences 205.581–598.
Griffiths, Paul E. & Russell D. Gray
2001 “Darwinism and Developmental Systems”. Cycles of Contingencies: Developmental systems and evolution ed. by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray, 195–218. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Griffiths, Paul E. & Russell D. Gray
2005 “Discussion: Three ways to misunderstand developmental systems theory”. Biology and Philosophy 20.417–425.
Griffiths, Paul E. & Robin D. Knight
1998 “What is the Developmentalist Challenge?”. Philosophy of Science 65.253–258.
Griffiths, Paul E. & Karola Stotz
2000 “How the Mind Grows: A developmental perspective on the biology of cognition”. Synthese 122.29–51.
Griffiths, Paul E. & Karola Stotz
2013Genetics and Philosophy: An introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Grohmann, Kleanthes K. & Cedric Boeckx
2013 “Introducing the volume”. The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics ed. by Cedric Boeckx & Kleanthes K. Grohmann, 1–3. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Guasti, Maria Teresa
2002Language Acquisition: The growth of grammar. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Hall, Brian K. & Wendy M. Olson
eds.2003Keywords & Concepts in Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Hoekstra, Teun & Jan G. Kooij
1988 “The Innateness Hypothesis”. Explaining Language Universals ed. by John A. Hawkins, 31–55. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hornstein, Norbert
2009A Theory of Syntax: Minimal operations and universal grammar. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hyams, Nina
2002 “Clausal Structure in Child Greek: A reply to Varlokosta, Vainikka and Rohrbacher and a reanalysis”. The Linguistic Review 19.225–269.
Jablonka, Eva & Marion J. Lamb
2005Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic variation in the history of life. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Jenkins, Lyle
1979 “The Genetics of Language”. Linguistics & Philosophy 3.105–119.
Johnston, Timothy
1987 “The Persistence of Dichotomies in the Study of Behavioral Development”. Developmental Review 7.149–182.
Johnston, Timothy & Laura Edwards
2002 “Genes, Interactions, and the Development of Behavior”. Psychological Review 109.26–34.
Keller, Evelyn Fox
1995Refiguring Life: Metaphors of twentieth-century biology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lander, Eric S. & Robert A. Weinberg
2000 “Genomics: Journey to the center of biology”. Science 287.1777–1782.
Lehrman, Daniel S.
1953 “A Critique of Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive Behavior”. The Quarterly Review of Biology 28:4.337–363.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1953 “Cognition in Ethnolinguistics”. Language 29.463–471.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1957 “A Probabilistic Approach to Language Learning”. Behavioral Science 2.1–13.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1960 “Language, Evolution, and Purposive Behavior”. Culture in History: Essays in honor of Paul Radin ed. by Stanley Diamond, 869–893. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1961 “Color Naming, Color Recognition, Color Discrimination: A re-appraisal”. Perceptual and Motor Skills 12.375–382.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1962a “A Laboratory for Speech Research at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center”. New England Journal of Medicine 266.385–392.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1962b “Understanding Language without Ability to Speak: A case report”. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 65:6.419–425.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1964a “Language Disorders in Childhood”. Harvard Educational Review 34:2.152–177.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1964b “A Biological Perspective of Language”. New Directions in the Study of Language ed. by Eric H. Lenneberg, 65–88. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1966 “The Natural History of language”. The Genesis of Language: A Psycholinguistic Approach ed. by Frank Smith & George A. Miller, 219–252. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Lenneberg, Eric H.
1967Biological Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley.
Lenneberg, Eric H., Irene A. Nichols & E. F. Rosenberger
1964 “Primitive Stages of Language Development in Mongolism”. Disorders of Communication 42.119–137 Baltimore, N.Y..: Williams & Wilkins.
Lenneberg, Eric H., Freda G. Rebelsky & Irene A. Nichols
1965 “The Vocalization of Infants Born to Deaf and to Hearing Parents”. Human Development 8.23–37.
Levit, Georgy S., Uwe Hossfeld & Lennart Olsson
2006 “From the ‘Modern Synthesis’ to Cybernetics: Ivan Ivanovich Schmalhausen (1884–1963) and his research program for a synthesis of evolutionary and developmental biology”. Journal of Experimental Zoology, Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution 306B:2.89–106.
Lewontin, Richard C.
1970 “The Units of Selection”. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 1.1–18.
Lewontin, Richard C.
2000aThe Triple Helix: Gene, organism, and environment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Lewontin, Richard
2000b “Foreword”. In Susan Oyama, The Ontogeny of Information. Developmental Systems and Evolution, vii–xv. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Lickliter, Robert
2008 “The Growth of Developmental Thought: Implications for a new evolutionary psychology”. New Ideas in Psychology 26.353–369.
2010 “Rethinking Epigenesis and Evolution in Light of Developmental Science”. Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience ed. by Mark S. Blumberg, John H. Freeman & Scott R. Robinson, 30–47. New York: Oxford University Press
Lightfoot, David
1982The Language Lottery. Toward a Biology of Grammars. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Lightfoot, David
1999The Development of Language: Acquisition, change, and evolution. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Lightfoot, David
2006How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Longa, Víctor M.
2008 “Una visión crítica sobre la noción de ‘programa genético’ desde la biología y la lingüística: Consecuencias para la conceptualización de la ontogenia del lenguaje”. Verba 35.347–385.
Longa, Víctor M. & Guillermo Lorenzo
2012 “Theoretical Linguistics Meets Development: Explaining FL from an epigenecist point of view”. Language, From a biological point of view. Current Issues in Biolinguistics ed. by Cedric Boeckx, María Carmen Horno Chéliz & José L. Mendívil Giró, 52–84. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Lorenzo, Guillermo & Víctor M. Longa
2009 “Beyond Generative Geneticism: Rethinking language acquisition from a developmentalist point of view”. Lingua 119.1300–1315.
Lorenzo, Guillermo & Víctor M. Longa
2018El innatismo: Origen, variaciones y vitalidad de una idea. Madrid: Cátedra.
2006 “Innateness and the Sciences”. Biology and Philosophy 21.155–188.
Marx, Otto
1967 “Appendix B: The history of the biological basis of language”. Lenneberg 1967: 443–469.
Maynard-Smith, John & Eörs Szathmáry
1999The Origins of Life: From the birth of life to the origin of language. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mayr, Ernst
1982The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, evolution, and inheritance. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Mayr, Ernst
1991One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the genesis of modern evolutionary thought. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Moore, David S.
2001The Dependent Gene: The fallacy of ‘Nature vs. Nurture’. New York: Henry Holt.
Moss, Lenny
2003What Genes Can’t Do. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Müller, Gert B. & Lennard Olson
2003 “Epigenesis and epigenetics”. Keywords & Concepts in Evolutionary Developmental Biology ed. by Brian K. Hall & Wendy M. Olson, 114–123. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Neisser, Ulric, Daniel Tapper & Eleanor J. Gibson
1975 “Eric H. Lenneberg: September 19, 1921–May 31, 1975”. Office of the Dean of the University Faculty of Cornell University. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Oyama, Susan
2000[1982]The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental systems and evolution. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.
Oyama, Susan
2001 “Terms in Tension: What do you do when all the good words are taken?”. Cycles of Contingencies: Developmental systems and evolution ed. by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray, 177–193. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Oyama, Susan, Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray
eds.2001Cycles of Contingencies: Developmental systems and evolution. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Penfield, Wilder & Lamar Roberts
1959Speech and Brain Mechanisms. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Piaget, Jean
1980 “Introductory remarks”. Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky ed. by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, 57–61. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo
In press. “From Zero to Fifty: Considerations on Eric Lenneberg’s Biological Foundations of Language and updates”. Biolinguistics 11.
Pinker, Steven
1984Language Learnability and Language Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Poeppel, David & David Embick
2005 “Defining the Relation between Linguistics and Neuroscience”. Twenty-first Century Psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones ed. by Anne Cutler, 103–118. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Raff, Rudolf A.
2000 “Evo-Devo: The evolution of a new discipline”. Nature Review Genetics 1.74–79.
Robert, Jason Scott
2003 “Developmental Systems Theory”. Keywords & Concepts in Evolutionary Developmental Biology ed. by Brian K. Hall & Wendy M. Olson, 94–97. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Robert, Jason Scott
2004Embryology, Epigenesis, and Evolution: Taking development seriously. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Samuels, Richard
2004 “Innateness and Cognitive Science”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8:3.136–141.
Smith, Linda B. & Esther Thelen
2003 “Development as a Dynamic System”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7:8.343–348.
Smith, Neil
1999Chomsky. Ideas and Ideals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spencer, John P., Mark S. Blumberg, Bob McMurray, Scott R. Robinson, Larissa K. Samuelson & J. Bruce Tomblin
2009 “Short Arms and Talking Eggs: Why we should no longer abide the nativist-empiricist debate”. Child Development Perspectives 3.79–87.
Thompson, D’Arcy W.
1917On Growth and Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thornton, Rosalind & Stephen Crain
2013 “Parameters: The pluses and the minuses”. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax ed. by Marcel den Dikken, 927–970. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Thornton, Rosalind & Kenneth Wexler
1999Principle B, Ellipsis, and Interpretation in Child Grammar. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Trettenbrein, Patrick C.
ed. In press 50 years later: A tribute to Eric Lenneberg’s Biological Foundations of Language Special issue of Biolinguistics 11
Vercelli, Donata & Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
2009 “Language in an Epigenetic Framework”. Of Minds & Language: A dialogue with Noam Chomsky in the Basque Country ed. by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Juan Uriagereka & Pello Salaburu, 97–107. New York: Oxford University Press.
Weber, Bruce W. & David J. Depew
2001 “Developmental Systems: Darwinian evolution, and the unity of science”. Cycles of Contingencies: Developmental systems and evolution ed. by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray, 239–253. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
West-Eberhard, Mary
2003Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wexler, Kenneth
1990 “Innateness and Maturation in Linguistic Development”. Developmental Psychobiology 23:7.645–660.
Wexler, Kenneth
1994 “Optional Infinitives, Head Movement and the Economy of Derivations”. Verb Movement ed. by David Lightfoot & Norbert Hornstein, 305–350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wexler, Kenneth
1998 “Very Early Parameter Setting and the Unique Checking Constraint: A new explanation of the optional infinitive stage”. Lingua 106.23–79.
Wexler, Kenneth
2003 “Lenneberg’s Dream: Learning, normal language development, and specific language impairment”. Language Competence across Populations: Toward a definition of specific language impairment ed. by Yonata Levi & Jeannette Schaeffer, 11–61. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Wexler, Kenneth
2011 “Grammatical Computation in the Optional Infinitive Stage”. Handbook of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition ed. by Jill de Villiers & Tom Roeper, 53–118. Dordrecht: Springer.
Wexler, Kenneth
2013 “Luria’s Biolinguistic Suggestion and the Growth of Language”. The Cambridge Handbook of Biolinguistics ed. by Cedric Boeckx & Kleanthes K. Grohmann, 94–128. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, Edward O.
1975Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Wimsatt, William
1999 “Generativity, Entrenchment, Evolution, and Innateness: Philosophy, evolutionary biology, and conceptual foundations of science”. Where Biology Meets Psychology: Philosophical essays ed. by Valerie G. Hardcastle 139–179. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Wimsatt, William
2001 “Generative Entrenchment and the Developmental Systems Approach to Evolutionary Processes.”. Cycles of Contingencies: Developmental systems and evolution ed. by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray, 219–237. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Yang, Charles D.
2004 “Toward a Theory of Language Growth”. Variation and Universals in Biolinguistics ed. by Lyle Jenkins, 37–56. Amsterdam: Elsevier.