Commentary on Friedemann Pulvermüller’s The Neuroscience of Language. On Brain Circuits of Words and Serial Order

This book offers a paradigmatic view of how it is possible to ground linguistic research on, and constrain linguistic theory by, neuroscientific evidence. The main aim of Pulvermüller’s book is to present the putative neurobiological basis of language, that is, how language is organized in the human brain: using the author’s own words, “to spell out language in the language of neurons” (Pulvermüller, 2005, p. 1). In his opinion, once a neuronal language is developed which connects linguistic structures and processes to brain structures and processes, “it would be possible to explore the space of possibilities that is restricted on the one side by current neuroscientific knowledge and on the other side by linguistic phenomena” (Pulvermüller, 2005, p. 272). Neuroscientific data could then constrain linguistic theory and vice versa. One of the fundamental reasons that leads Pulvermüller to set up his program is the belief that “The brain machinery is not just one arbitrary way of implementing the process it realizes, as, for example, any hardware computer configuration can realize almost any computer program or piece of software. The claim is that, instead, the hardware reveals aspects of the program. Neuronal structure is information” (Pulvermüller, 2005, p. 9). The structural and functional properties of the cortex must then be taken into account. Neuroanatomical and neurophysiological evidence indicates that the cerebral cortex is a network of neurons characterized by ordered input and output connections in modality-specific areas, by heavy information mixing through shortand long-distance connections, and by correlation learning. Indeed, the cortex exhibits the following properties: