title: The biological basis of language: insight from developmental grammatical impairments.
abstract: Specific language impairment (SLI), a genetic developmental disorder, offers insights into the neurobiological and computational organization of language. A subtype, Grammatical-SLI (G-SLI), involves greater impairments in 'extended' grammatical representations, which are nonlocal, hierarchical, abstract, and composed, than in 'basic' ones, which are local, linear, semantic, and holistic. This distinction is seen in syntax, morphology, and phonology, and may be tied to abnormalities in the left hemisphere and basal ganglia, consistent with new models of the neurobiology of language which distinguish dorsal and ventral processing streams. Delineating neurolinguistic phenotypes promises a better understanding of the effects of genes on the brain circuitry underlying normal and impaired language abilities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, William James Hall 970, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Heather K J
authors.initials: HK
authors.lastname: van der Lely
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, William James Hall 970, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: pinker@wjh.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pinker
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology; D002663:Child Language; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics
keywords: brain and language; genetics of language; language disorders; neurolinguistics; specific language impairment