A comprehensive account of the neurobiological basis of language arguing that species-specific
brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language.Language makes us
human. It is an intrinsic part of us although we seldom think about it. Language is also an
extremely complex entity with subcomponents responsible for its phonological syntactic and
semantic aspects. In this landmark work Angela Friederici offers a comprehensive account of
these subcomponents and how they are integrated. Tracing the neurobiological basis of language
across brain regions in humans and other primate species she argues that species-specific
brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language.Friederici shows which
brain regions support the different language processes and more important how these brain
regions are connected structurally and functionally to make language processes that take place
in milliseconds possible. She finds that one particular brainstructure (a white matter dorsal
tract) connecting syntax-relevant brain regions is present only in the mature human brain and
only weakly present in other primate brains. Is this the missing link that explains humans'
capacity for language?Friederici describes the basic language functions and their brain basis
the language networks connecting different language-related brain regions the brain basis of
language acquisition during early childhood and when learning a second language proposing a
neurocognitive model of the ontogeny of language and the evolution of language and underlying
neural constraints. She finds that it is the information exchange between the relevant brain
regions supported by the white matter tract that is the crucial factor in both language
development and evolution.
