LING 646, Cognitive Neuroscience of Language

Homework #1

posted 1/27/07, due Friday 2/2/07 (this allows for in-class discussions in Thursday's class); please submit via email, preferably in MSWord (.doc; NOT the new .docx) format.

Question: What did Paul Broca consider to be the contribution to language abilities of the area later known as Broca's area? How does his view of the internal structure of the language faculty compare to more recent approaches?

Sources: Broca's 1861 article uses some terminology that appears a little dated, but it is nevertheless remarkably lucid. For examples of more recent views you could look to Geschwind's classic 1970 article in Science and to Hickok & Poeppel's 2004 review article in Cognition, which explores parallels beween speech and vision. As an optional bonus, you could also look to excerpts from the 2004 article by Stowe, Haverkort & Zwarts in Lingua that argues for a rethinking of the functional neuroanatomy of language.

Guidelines: Your answer does not need to be long, but it does need to be clearly argued. You should always re-read your work before submitting it, in order to check that your arguments will be clear to your reader(s).