Gates to Language

Introduction

Language is perhaps the most prominent feature that distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Nevertheless, many perceptual and learning mechanisms serving language acquisition are not tailored specifically to language nor to humans.

Research Background

Decades of research have shown that several animal species are equipped with perceptual, cognitive, and neural architectures that allow them to learn language, but only humans end up doing so. The key features and mechanisms that make language learnable by very young humans are still unclear.

Project Focus

The GALA project focuses on how humans begin to learn language, exploring the biological nature of the mechanisms at the ‘entry-gate’ of language through a comparative-developmental approach involving:

1. Nonhuman species
2. Human newborns
3. Infants
4. Adults

Syllables and Language Acquisition

Syllables are essential processing units of speech at the onset of language acquisition, through which newborns and infants preferentially encode and organize the speech signal.

Hypothesis

My proposal is that the mechanisms that allow parsing syllables from speech emerge from evolutionary-ancient sensory processes that likely evolved to compute different inputs in different species.

Research Lines

I will explore two alleged universal linguistic constraints responsible for parsing syllables and shaping the syllabic structure:

1. Maximal Onset Principle (Research Line 1)
2. Sonority Hierarchy (Research Line 2)

Methodology

I will test these constraints across species and at distinct stages of human development, as well as in distinct sensory modalities, using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques.

Expected Outcomes

The GALA project will shed light on the ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins of the mechanisms through which humans access language. It will provide invaluable new knowledge that will bring us closer to understanding why humans are the only species so far able to learn language.