ABSTRACT
Prevailing views about the biological foundations of language assume that very early language acquisition is tied to speech. Universal regularities in the timing and structure of infants’ vocal babbling and first words have been taken as evidence that the brain must be attuned specifically to perceiving and producing spoken language in early life. To be sure, a frequent answer to the question “how does early human language acquisition begin?” is that it is the result of the development of the neuroanatomical and neuro-physiological mechanisms involved in the perception and the production of speech. An assumption that also underlies this view is that spoken languages are better suited to the brain’s maturational needs in development. Put another way, the view of human biology at work here is that evolution has rendered the human brain neurologically “hardwired” for speech (Liberman & Mattingly, 1985, 1989; Lieberman, 1984).
