The Boundaries of Babel
The Brain and the Enigma of Impossible Languages

An exploration of what research at the intersection of contemporary theoretical linguistics and the cognitive neurosciences can reveal about the constraints on the apparently chaotic variation in human languages.

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, genetic,s and evolution.Andrea Moro is Professor of General Linguistics at the San Raffaele University in Milan.