A Note on the Biology of Speech Perception *

The goal of a biological psychology is to undermine the autonomy of whatever it studies. For language, the goal is to derive its properties from other, presumably prior, properties of the human organism and its natural environment (cf. Lindblom, 1980). This does not mean that we should expect to reduce language to a mere collection of non-linguistic capacities in the individual, but it does mean that we should try to specify the perceptual and motor capacities out of which language has emerged in the species. The likelihood that this endeavor will go far with syntax in the near future is low, because we still know very little about the perceptuomotor principles that might underlie syntactic capacity--that is why current study of syntax is, from a biological point of view, descriptive rather than explanatory. But the prospects are better for phonology, because phonology is necessarily couched in terms that invite us to reflect on the perceptual and motor capacities that support it.