What do you think?
Rate this book
Current Studies in Linguistics
I confini di Babele. Il cervello e il mistero delle lingue impossibili
In The Boundaries of Babel, Andrea Moro tells the story of an encounter between two cultures: contemporary theoretical linguistics and the cognitive neurosciences. The study of language within a biological context has been ongoing for more than fifty years. The development of neuroimaging technology offers new opportunities to enrich the "biolinguistic perspective" and extend it beyond an abstract framework for inquiry. As a leading theoretical linguist in the generative tradition and also a cognitive scientist schooled in the new imaging technology, Moro is uniquely equipped to explore this.
Moro examines what he calls the "hidden" revolution in contemporary science: the discovery that the number of possible grammars is not infinite and that their number is biologically limited. This radical but little-discussed change in the way we look at language, he claims, will require us to rethink not just the fundamentals of linguistics and neurosciences but also our view of the human mind. Moro searches for neurobiological correlates of "the boundaries of Babel"--the constraints on the apparent chaotic variation in human languages--by using an original experimental design based on artificial languages. He offers a critical overview of some of the fundamental results from linguistics over the last fifty years, in particular regarding syntax, then uses these essential aspects of language to examine two neuroimaging experiments in which he took part. He describes the two neuroimaging techniques used (positron emission topography, or PET, and functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI), but makes it clear that techniques and machines do not provide interesting data without a sound theoretical framework. Finally, he discusses some speculative aspects of modern research in biolinguistics regarding the impact of the linear structure of linguistics expression on grammar, and more generally, some core aspects of language acquisition, genetics, and evolution.
Moro examines what he calls the "hidden" revolution in contemporary science: the discovery that the number of possible grammars is not infinite and that their number is biologically limited. This radical but little-discussed change in the way we look at language, he claims, will require us to rethink not just the fundamentals of linguistics and neurosciences but also our view of the human mind. Moro searches for neurobiological correlates of "the boundaries of Babel"--the constraints on the apparent chaotic variation in human languages--by using an original experimental design based on artificial languages. He offers a critical overview of some of the fundamental results from linguistics over the last fifty years, in particular regarding syntax, then uses these essential aspects of language to examine two neuroimaging experiments in which he took part. He describes the two neuroimaging techniques used (positron emission topography, or PET, and functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI), but makes it clear that techniques and machines do not provide interesting data without a sound theoretical framework. Finally, he discusses some speculative aspects of modern research in biolinguistics regarding the impact of the linear structure of linguistics expression on grammar, and more generally, some core aspects of language acquisition, genetics, and evolution.
308 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
18 people are currently reading
267 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 3, 2017
Highly recommended for any neuropsychologist or linguist wanting to learn about the other field. A highly-readable contribution to the intersection of these two fields.
I foolishly came in expecting a straightforward answer to "what are the impossible languages". In a lesser book you would get a laundry list of "no language has tense on conjunctions" or "almost no language has OSV word order". In this challenging book, you get an introduction to the architecture of the brain, and a crash course in graduate-level minimalist syntax, on the way to the answer to the question.
Moro distinguishes himself as a true interdisciplinary scientist. When I read this book, I feel so nearsighted, just focusing on a single discipline. Almost every major point is underwritten by an insightful metaphor to the natural sciences — syntactic trees can be as heuristic, as predictive as the periodic table — asking why there are limits on possible languages is like asking why there are spectral limits on what the eye can see.
This is an introduction, in that Moro presupposes very little and talks about very "basic" stuff in linguistics, but it's not easy. Moro instructively poses, and walks through potential answers, to both good and bad questions. The bad questions are interesting because so often we are side-tracked by enormous, unanswerable Headline questions like "is there a gene for language??" and "how are syntax trees in the brain??" that we can't appreciate the real answers that we have to the good questions.
In 3 long chapters, he gives a whirlwind tour of issues that all linguists and neuropsychologists interested in language should know about. Chapter 1 is for everyone. Chapter 2 focuses on two experiments he conducted, which attempted to demonstrate the activation in the brain related to processing syntax, and discussing in detail the methodologies and how to interpret such results. Chapter 3 is probably of most interest to the linguists, as he puts Kayne's Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) in a relevant neuropsychological context, and presents his own Dynamic Antisymmetry theory as an alternative.
I love the style of this book - it's long form scientific narrative. It reads like a friendly lecture or colloquium talk, laced with trains-of-thought and colorful metaphors. For example, the experiments are discussed as a narrative (we wanted to test this, so we designed it this way...) not chunked into the typical clinical presentation of a scientific article (methodology, results, stimuli,...). Thoughtfully structured and easy to follow.
I foolishly came in expecting a straightforward answer to "what are the impossible languages". In a lesser book you would get a laundry list of "no language has tense on conjunctions" or "almost no language has OSV word order". In this challenging book, you get an introduction to the architecture of the brain, and a crash course in graduate-level minimalist syntax, on the way to the answer to the question.
Moro distinguishes himself as a true interdisciplinary scientist. When I read this book, I feel so nearsighted, just focusing on a single discipline. Almost every major point is underwritten by an insightful metaphor to the natural sciences — syntactic trees can be as heuristic, as predictive as the periodic table — asking why there are limits on possible languages is like asking why there are spectral limits on what the eye can see.
This is an introduction, in that Moro presupposes very little and talks about very "basic" stuff in linguistics, but it's not easy. Moro instructively poses, and walks through potential answers, to both good and bad questions. The bad questions are interesting because so often we are side-tracked by enormous, unanswerable Headline questions like "is there a gene for language??" and "how are syntax trees in the brain??" that we can't appreciate the real answers that we have to the good questions.
In 3 long chapters, he gives a whirlwind tour of issues that all linguists and neuropsychologists interested in language should know about. Chapter 1 is for everyone. Chapter 2 focuses on two experiments he conducted, which attempted to demonstrate the activation in the brain related to processing syntax, and discussing in detail the methodologies and how to interpret such results. Chapter 3 is probably of most interest to the linguists, as he puts Kayne's Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) in a relevant neuropsychological context, and presents his own Dynamic Antisymmetry theory as an alternative.
I love the style of this book - it's long form scientific narrative. It reads like a friendly lecture or colloquium talk, laced with trains-of-thought and colorful metaphors. For example, the experiments are discussed as a narrative (we wanted to test this, so we designed it this way...) not chunked into the typical clinical presentation of a scientific article (methodology, results, stimuli,...). Thoughtfully structured and easy to follow.
January 1, 2016
Finished just in time for the new year. :P Totally arbitrary, but it's good. For anyone reading this in the future: It should absolutely not take you 3+ months to read this book. It is actually pretty short (about 220 pages), but it is fairly dense. The author does a great job of explaining things in a simple, straightforward manner, even complex topics. The first section is a review of the field of linguistics and its subfields as well as a look at some of the ways in which human language is unique (among forms of communication) and universal (in terms of spread across different languages), specifically in terms of syntax. The second section is about the BRAIN! It's wonderful and really well explained; I wish I had had this book during grad school while reading papers about cognitive linguistics. Anyway, the author explains how PET scans and similar things work, and then presents findings to support the idea that language is biologically founded somehow. The final section explores the author's own theory (dynamic antisymmetry), which was pretty interesting compared with the minimalist program.
Overall I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people into the cognitive sciences or who want to understand the reasoning behind biological foundations to language. Honestly, I've always been skeptical to the biological foundation to language theory (and sympathetic to language as an emergent property) simply because it sounded too teleological, but the way Moro presents it made it much more palatable and understandable. I am more sympathetic to the view and interested in seeing where research takes us in the future.
Overall I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to people into the cognitive sciences or who want to understand the reasoning behind biological foundations to language. Honestly, I've always been skeptical to the biological foundation to language theory (and sympathetic to language as an emergent property) simply because it sounded too teleological, but the way Moro presents it made it much more palatable and understandable. I am more sympathetic to the view and interested in seeing where research takes us in the future.
January 6, 2020
I had high hopes for this book and was very disappointed and even a bit pissed off that the title and blurbs promised so much more than the book actually delivered. The content was 95% straight later (1990's) Chomskian theory and 5% random additional interesting tidbits. Of the latter some (not all) were presented in the form of experimental results, and one or two could be described as involving neuroscience in at least a tangential way, but in the end the book completely failed to show how neuroscience either supports the existing Chomskian model or points a way forward for the further evolution of the model. I was hoping this book would convince that there is still life in Chomskian theory, but instead it reinforced my belief that the theory has already gone as far as it can go and has not and will not yield a model of language as it actually exists in the human brain. I think neuroscience is key to getting to such a model, but think it needs to be paired not with linguistics and the theory of grammar but with computer science and the theory (and practice) of modern neural nets (deep learning and related).
I say this as someone who studied linguistics in the heyday of the Chomskian linguistics in the 70's and continued to follow the field over the years, but moved over to software development in the 80's and subsequently witnessed the major advances computing has gone through including the advent of open-source, distributed computing, significantly more powerful hardware (including exponentially faster processors, 64-bit memory and graphics processors in the form of GPUs, and, most recently, the new age of neural nets pioneered by Geoffrey Hinton and others. Measured against the enormous progress that computing has made in the last 50 years, that made in linguistics seems very modest to say the least. This is clearly largely due to the enormous advantage computing has enjoyed over linguistics in the area of funding, but this is in turn due to linguistics failing to present a program of research that justifies significant funding. This can change, but I think it will take a major overhaul of the culture of the field to make it happen.
I say this as someone who studied linguistics in the heyday of the Chomskian linguistics in the 70's and continued to follow the field over the years, but moved over to software development in the 80's and subsequently witnessed the major advances computing has gone through including the advent of open-source, distributed computing, significantly more powerful hardware (including exponentially faster processors, 64-bit memory and graphics processors in the form of GPUs, and, most recently, the new age of neural nets pioneered by Geoffrey Hinton and others. Measured against the enormous progress that computing has made in the last 50 years, that made in linguistics seems very modest to say the least. This is clearly largely due to the enormous advantage computing has enjoyed over linguistics in the area of funding, but this is in turn due to linguistics failing to present a program of research that justifies significant funding. This can change, but I think it will take a major overhaul of the culture of the field to make it happen.
April 9, 2023
Andrea Moro si dimostra ancora una volta un grande divulgatore scientifico. Ma questo testo è molto di più che un semplice manuale di divulgazione, tanto che, pur nella cristallina chiarezza della sua prosa, Moro finisce per cedere a qualche tecnicismo di troppo, dando l'impressione di rivolgersi ad un pubblico specialistico. Malgrado ciò, i Confini di Babele resta un libro interessantissimo per comprendere i legami tra lingua e direttrici biologiche del nostro cervello.
August 3, 2018
Mi ero fatta una idea completamente diversa leggendo la sinopse del libro quando l'ho comprato. Un libro di studi linguistici dove l'autore descrive le sue ricerche sulla conessione tra la struttura grammaticale delle lingue e il cervello e come questa incide sulle possibilità di formazione di una lingua. L'ho finito a stento perché la linguistica non è un mio campo di interesse.
September 15, 2021
This is a MUST for whoever wants to study linguistics. The author makes some examples to explain a thing that's under everyone's eyes but nobody questioned. Once the question is made, finding an answer is not that easy. With the support of Chosmky's theories, the author do explain some interesting points.
April 23, 2022
a well-rounded argument for Generative syntax! Chapter 1 concentrates on the theory of syntax as described in different pieces of work by Chomsky. Chapter 2 tests the hypotheses of the previous chapter with experiments.
I recommend reading this book for beginners. I think it would be a worthwhile read for students starting a linguistic program.
I recommend reading this book for beginners. I think it would be a worthwhile read for students starting a linguistic program.
July 4, 2025
Saggio che ho amato: il problema è che mi ha lasciato con tanta di quella bibliografia secondaria che se uno ci si mettesse dovrebbe stare a leggere tutto il giorno... fortuna che non è il mio caso...
Want to read
January 1, 2024___________________________________
FROM BOOK: Il pulcino di Kant (Giorgio Vallortigara)
FROM BOOK: Il pulcino di Kant (Giorgio Vallortigara)
March 8, 2024
Il linguaggio è naturale o culturale? Come fanno i bambini ad imparare il linguaggio senza nessuna indicazione se ci sono così tante possibilità interpretative?
Moro qui parla del nesso tra il cervello umano e il linguaggio: cerca di dimostrare che ci sono degli schemi biologici alla base del linguaggio comuni a tutti gli uomini e quindi a tutte le lingue. Le lingue che non rispettano queste regole naturali sono "lingue impossibili".
Il linguaggio risulta essere un'intricata Babele difficile da comprendere. Moro si chiede quali siano i suoi confini, quanto dipenda dall'ambiente esterno e quanto, invece, ci sia di innato. Ci conduce in un percorso di curiosità e ricerca attraverso alcuni esperimenti ed essi finiscono per portare ulteriori domande piuttosto che risposte a ciò che già ci eravamo chiesti. Il tutto rimane velato quindi dal mistero, ma anche dalla meraviglia per le scoperte interessantissime che già si sono fatte.
È quasi eccitante vedere tutto l'entusiasmo che traspare dall'autore stesso e anche da Chomsky nella nota introduttiva.
Il libro è un testo a tratti un po' tecnico, ma perfetto per iniziarsi all'argomento e questa genuina e vivace curiosità di Moro rimane evidente tutto il tempo, facendo apparire tutto molto naturale e necessario, proprio come quando si vede un bambino alla scoperta del mondo. Anche i tecnicismi diventano così una parte di quella ricerca istintiva che da millenni permette la crescita dell'uomo.
Moro qui parla del nesso tra il cervello umano e il linguaggio: cerca di dimostrare che ci sono degli schemi biologici alla base del linguaggio comuni a tutti gli uomini e quindi a tutte le lingue. Le lingue che non rispettano queste regole naturali sono "lingue impossibili".
Il linguaggio risulta essere un'intricata Babele difficile da comprendere. Moro si chiede quali siano i suoi confini, quanto dipenda dall'ambiente esterno e quanto, invece, ci sia di innato. Ci conduce in un percorso di curiosità e ricerca attraverso alcuni esperimenti ed essi finiscono per portare ulteriori domande piuttosto che risposte a ciò che già ci eravamo chiesti. Il tutto rimane velato quindi dal mistero, ma anche dalla meraviglia per le scoperte interessantissime che già si sono fatte.
È quasi eccitante vedere tutto l'entusiasmo che traspare dall'autore stesso e anche da Chomsky nella nota introduttiva.
Il libro è un testo a tratti un po' tecnico, ma perfetto per iniziarsi all'argomento e questa genuina e vivace curiosità di Moro rimane evidente tutto il tempo, facendo apparire tutto molto naturale e necessario, proprio come quando si vede un bambino alla scoperta del mondo. Anche i tecnicismi diventano così una parte di quella ricerca istintiva che da millenni permette la crescita dell'uomo.
February 23, 2010
Interesting analysis of points of convergence between theoretical linguistics and recent developments in research on the neurobiology of language acquisition/use. Extremely dense but clearly elucidated, this deceptively slim volume should be of interest to anyone concerned with language acquisition. Not to be undertaken casually, though.
November 19, 2019
Interesting but a bit complicated for people outside the field
February 24, 2023
Lettura estremamente interessante ed accessibile sia a profani che a linguisti, Moro espone con grande chiarezza e padronanza del tema gettando interessanti spunti per nuove letture e ricerche
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews