Growing Babies and Growing Humans

Abstract

Berwick and Chomsky propose that grammar evolved by one mutation in the last 100,000 years, giving the function, Merge, duly becoming part of the human genome. Adopting a current, phase-based version of the Minimalist Program from Chomsky. It is proposed here that speech and language involve necessarily-ordered evolutionary advances, one being Merge, another the notion of ‘uninterpretable features'. On this basis, most disorders may be by a failure of ontogeny, rather than by specific malformations – with a bearing on the common finding of across-the-board co-morbidities, especially those involving metalinguistics. A small ontogenetic defect is predicted to have across-the-board effects. Two vulnerable aspects of language development are the notions of subjecthood and agreement, both universal by the Mimimalist Program, both involving uninterpretable features. If subjecthood, for instance, is not recognised, the first clinical task is to help the child discover the first step of projection. This model encourages a focus on the child and the diagnostic details.