The broad question I became most interested in while at MIT was:
How are the structures and categories of linguistic theory represented in the brain?
While the reductionist program of connectionism never did anything for me, at MIT I discovered the fascinating young field of cognitive neuroscience. Even before Alec Marantz managed to get hold of his own MEG machine, I had the chance to work in his MEG analysis lab, alongside my illustrious fellow students Colin Phillips (Linguistics) and David Poeppel (Brain & Cog Sci). Our experiments exploring phonological and lexical representations in the brain were exciting steps in the direction we collectively imagined, and linguistically informed research in this direction still strikes me as some of the most intriguing and potentially fruitful in the field.
The question posed above has most certainly has not been resolved, but it continues to be a meaningful one. Stemmer & Whitaker’s (2008) Handbook of the Neuroscience of Language has an entire chapter on the neuroscience of syntax (written by Alan Beretta) that cites extensive research from the last 15 years by a variety of linguistically informed scholars, e.g. Avrutin, Beretta himself, Caplan, Friederici, Grodzinsky, Kaan, Linebarger, Marantz, Phillips, Poeppel, and Pylkkänen. Others (Hagoort, Hickok, Kutas, Levelt, Moro, Ullman, etc.) have contributed to this and other areas of understanding, including phonology, morphology, and the lexicon.
There are various obstacles to linguistically-informed research in neuroscience (which at least partly account for my own decision to pursue more tractable lines of inquiry). Of course there are strategic obstacles, perhaps chief among them that both language and the brain are such complex systems. However, generative linguistics has made tremendous strides in our understanding of human language as a unified system with a common biological basis – thanks in no small part to the influence of Chomsky, Halle, and the many eminent scholars they have trained. Moreover, neuroimaging techniques provide a wealth of new opportunities to study the living brain. Thus, in principle, progress in the cognitive neuroscience of language is now easier to make than it has ever been.
Still, many tactical and logistical obstacles remain. Neuroimaging equipment is expensive. The training required to gather and analyze data, and simply to keep the machinery and software running properly, is extensive. It is challenging to train students deeply enough in two distinct fields (linguistics and cognitive neuroscience) that they can make a significant contribution. This is in part because of stark differences between the fields, in part because of a lack of relevant training in the K-12 school system, and in part because there are few funding opportunities like the Research Training Grant that created MIT’s five-year doctoral program in Psycholinguistics. Neurolinguistics is not a traditional area of linguistics, so there is rarely an existing culture, critical mass, or infrastructure to support scholars working in this area. There are few neurolinguistics jobs for linguistically trained scholars. And it is virtually impossible to conduct neurolinguistics research as a side interest, since it requires such an enormous investment of both money and time.
In short, the scholars who have succeeded in conducting research in this area are true pioneers. I hope and trust that they and their students will continue to expand this exciting new direction for the field.
No similar replies.