lenneberg review

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Review Author(s): Robert F. Terwilliger Review by: Robert F. Terwilliger Source: Social Research, Vol. 35, No. 3 (AUTUMN 1968), pp. 570-574Published by: The New SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40969926Accessed: 24-08-2015 09:23 UTC

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570 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Necessity is a situation which is complete and in which I find myself involved"(p.345).

Volition is a difficult area to investigate phenomenologically. Ri- coeur has shown most of the problems and a concrete way to approach them. It is readily understandable how he could aspire to build a philosophy from this basis. In addition, students of the work of Al- fred Schutz will find much complementation and confirmation of Schutz's theory of action in Ricoeur's theory of volition.

New York Lester Embree

LENNEBERG, ERIC H., Biological Foundations of Language. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1967.

A psychologist once engaged in a collaborative effort with a philosopher, at the end of which he remarked: "Well, the psychology may not be much but the philosophy is great!" To this, the philosopher replied: "Funny, I was about to say just the opposite."

Given the universal tendency to underestimate the value of con- tributions to one's field of specialization and to overestimate contribu- tions to areas in which one has little knowledge, I must still make the following evaluation: Professor Lenneberg's biological treatise seems quite stimulating, while his psycholinguistic treatise is much less so.

Professor Lenneberg sets himself the task of showing certain of the biological correlates of language. Specifically, he is concerned with the issues of why man alone has fully developed language, why it is that language development follows the apparently similar pattern which it does in most children, and - more generally and importantly - what sorts of biological structures are required to account for

language, and what evidence can be marshalled for the existence of any such structures. That there are biological bases of language probably needs no proof. That there are no specific, precise bio-

logical structures underlying language is perhaps less well known, but is amply and substantially demonstrated in this work. The biological data which are of most significance, however, are those which show the patterns of brain maturation and specialization, which Lenneberg uses to try to establish a correlation between brain

development and language development. It is Lenneberg's contention that much of the nature of language

can be properly said to be species specific or instinctual. If one could demonstrate a correlation between changes in brain structure



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and changes in language behavior, one would, of course, have strong evidence in favor of an hypothesis which claimed that the genetic determination of brain structure was of primary causality in deter- mining the nature of language behavior. While this is a somewhat bowlderized version of Lenneberg's hypothesis, it does express a crucial aspect of the work, namely that "The biological properties of the human form of cognition set strict limits to the range of possibilities for variations in natural languages." (p. 375) Such a correlation between biology and behavior does clearly exist. Certain fundamental brain changes appear to take place during the period in which language is developing. And certain terminal states in brain development seem to be reached at or about the time at which language reaches its most mature state - around puberty, say. In the latter case, typically we find that the brain has a dominant hemisphere which is contralateral to the hand and/or eye of prefer- ence for the individual. Thus, for most adults, the left hemisphere is dominant. Moreover we find that a) evidence from brain injury suggests that language is dependent upon this dominant hemisphere and will be destroyed to the extent that the hemisphere is injured, and b) that in cases of complete dominant hemispherectomy the relearning of language is difficult, if not impossible. Prior to puberty, this hemispherical dominance does not seem to be found; at least it seems possible to retrain language in brain injured young people.

Now this is the typical case. But it is by no means universal. There are cases of right-handed individuals who are not left-hemisphere dominant. And there are cases of left hemispherectomies who relearned language. The correlation is, in other words, not perfect. This, by itself, is perhaps not too damaging - the demonstration of the correlation itself is worthy of merit, even though not perfect. However, it should be noted that inference from the locus of an injury to the symptom is not as clear as it might seem. Goldstein argued that the existence of an injury in a specific locus and a particu- lar symptom did not indicate that the locus controls the symptom. It may in fact interact with almost the entire brain and the disturbance of that interaction may produce the symptom. Logically the same argument holds even when dealing with an entire hemisphere -

although it appears less fallacious to place the control of language in a hemisphere rather than in some smaller specific cortical area. (Coincidentally, Lenneberg makes direct reference to Goldstein only once in a rather lengthy tome.)

Given the evidence on structural maturation and its correlation with the development of language behavior, Lenneberg wishes to



572 SOCIAL RESEARCH

infer that 1) since all normal human beings have similar structures, therefore all human cognitive functioning is similar, and 2) since language is a type of cognitive functioning, therefore all human languages are similar. Human cognitive functioning he sees as being the use of transformations. Similarities between things are seen because one can be transformed into another. And, following Chom- sky, linguistic utterances - and languages - are similar to the extent that they can be transformed into one another. In addition to the structural evidence, the basic transformational nature of cognition implies that languages will be basically similar: ". . . the outer form of languages may vary with relatively great freedom, whereas the underlying type remains constant." (p. 375)

The logic here appears hopelessly stretched. Consider first the transformational notion. It is a fact that certain simple geometrical forms which are seen as similar may be transformed (formally or mathematically) into one another. Moreover, we can even see that this transformation can take place and - if we wish - can explain to ourselves the perceived similarity by appealing to this formal property of the forms. (In passing, Lenneberg obeys the unfortunate psycho- logical habit of dealing with simple sensory material when he is forced to talk about the real world. This has its merits, but it ignores the fact that one of the wonderful things about language is that it permits us to talk about and deal with things which are not simple sensory material. A cat can deal with simple forms and brightnesses; it can not deal with democracy.) We can leave aside for the moment the fact that it was he himself who imposed the transformation after he saw the similarity, that looking alike is the grounds for finding a transformation, not the other way around. But assuming "uncon- scious transformations," if you will, what do they explain? I submit that it is little, for the very reason that they can explain nearly everything. To be specific, d'Arcy Thompson's illustrations of the formal similarities among species of fish (which Lenneberg cites), while of interest, in themselves tell us little about the fish; we do not know how they behave, where they live, whether they are good to eat, or what have you. Or, to return to simple forms, topology shows that a transformation can be made from a circle to a torus. This mathematical identity may be of some interest, but if it were this I was reacting to, how would I know which to dip in my coffee? I suspect that a transformation could be written for nearly any pair of stimuli. Hence, without a good deal more specification about the nature of these transformations, one must express some reservations as to whether they underlie all cognitive processes.



BOOK REVIEWS 573

Now it is true that all natural languages can be transformed into one another - i.e., translated. Could this fact, or even a yet to be proven fact of cognition being transformational, lead to the conclu- sion that with regard to languages ". . . the underlying type remains constant/'? In fact, what does it mean to say that all languages are of the same underlying type? It has the ring of an hypothesis that is not open to any meaningful empirical test. The only possible meaning which can be given to it is this: the hypothesis that the nature of one's native language influences one's cognitive processes is false. That is, any theory of linguistic relativity such as that of B. L. Whorf is false. Yet the statement is still not clear. If the "nature of cognitive processes" is defined as transformational, then it is clear that, by definition, no language can influence this nature. This therefore renders the statement resoundingly trivial. If, on the other hand, the nature of a language affects what one cognizes about, then perhaps we have a testable hypothesis. Space does not permit an evaluation of it here. But it is fair to point out that Lenneberg does scant justice to it. His evaluation is restricted only to language which deals with simple sensory material - the very idea in which one might expect language to have its least cognitive effects. If language does affect cognition in this latter sense, as I suspect it does, then, either Lenneberg is wrong or is again trivial. That is, the underlying sameness of languages represents either a) the fact that they are all languages, b) that they are translatable into one another, or c) that the brain functions underlying language are similar but that this similarity is so far removed from the behavior of life of the individual speakers of the language that it is of no use in any behavioral explanation.

The transformational notion of cognition essentially seems to sug- gest a highly subjective theory of language - because the individual is a "transformer" he can himself "create" language. Of course, a subjective approach could have suggested the transformational theory, as the following indicates: "Communication is a social phenomenon, whereas naming is an intrapersonal one; the intrapersonal process may become a social one by virtue of enormous similarities between the cognitive functioning of all individuals and an apparent specific motivation in humans to interact socially." (p. 336) One can - perhaps - forgive the apparent overlooking of the social nature of language acquisition, indeed of the social nature of the very world in which man lives. But we cannot overlook the logical implications of such a notion - namely that it is perfectly possible, even likely, that individuals will develop individual, idiosyncratic, private Ian-



574 SOCIAL RESEARCH

guages. By this I do not mean codes of natural, social languages. I mean, rather, that it implies that one can apparently name an experience which is totally private since, according to Lenneberg, all that is necessary for naming is present in the individual. If it is possible for him to refute Wittgenstein's elaborate argument to the contrary in the Philosophical Investigations, all well and good. But without such a refutation, the evidence for this sort of language behavior seems slim indeed.

The scientist who attempts to understand language has before him the choice of several levels of analysis: the biological and the behavioral, the individual and the social. No account of language can be complete or correct without the proper balance being met between these several approaches, for they are all necessary to understand language. While the scientist is free to select one for critical study, he must beware that over-emphasis on but one of a set of interrelated processes may yield a distorted or incoherent picture of the phenomenon in which he is interested. Lenneberg's emphasis on the biological has produced a synthesis of data which the student of language can ill afford to ignore, and hypotheses which can be fruitfully argued. But in the end this emphasis has led to a distortion of language, for it has been at the price of the other necessary levels of understanding.

The Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research

Robert F. Terwilliger

POWDERMAKER, HORTENSE, Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1966, $6.50.

This book by a really intrepid field worker is a welcome addition to the growing literature which deals with the personal factor in anthro-

pological field work. It might be called the author's autobiography of herself as a participant observer. A book of this kind requires not

only a sensitivity to the nuances of an alien culture but also to oneself in the role of field worker. An extremely sensitive person such as

John Seeley can turn such a work into a tour de force. Though Dr. Powdermaker's analysis does not attain the depths of insight which would put her in Seeley's class, her book is an important work which should stimulate other investigations of the same kind.

The author sets for herself the task of "standing outside and observ-

ing one anthropologist (herself) . . . stepping into societies and out



lenneberg review

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