NEUROSCIENCE / 3
THE NEW FRONTIER

THE BIG BANG OF THE WORD
The rules of syntax are very complicated, and yet we learn them as children. So what is the relationship between mind and language? And why does every grammar encapsulate the infinite? We are searching for the human code, which is “inscribed” in the brain. In the last installment of this series, neurolinguist ANDREA MORO tells us why “we are designed in a special way.”

by Alessandra Stoppa

“Language is more like a snowflake than a giraffe’s neck.” He knows that he has left his listener speechless. “It’s strange, I understand. But since the infinite is in play, it can’t help but be like this.” It is poetic to hear neurolinguist Andrea Moro talk about words. He invents images, odd verbs, and phrases within phrases within phrases, in order to demonstrate that the grammar of every human language encapsulates the infinite. “Language is born like a snowflake–that is, from the laws of nature, and not from an accumulation of historical, evolutionary facts. Its rules, which are inseparably linked to the infinite, cannot but be born suddenly and completely in the brain.”
He cannot entirely explain the passion that became his profession: “I’ve had it since I was a kid. Maybe I was fascinated by the idea of discovering secret codes. And the most secret code of all is the one with which we were constructed.” He feels like a mathematician who missed his calling, who fell in love with the brain more so than with words, and who was very confused in college, changing his major four times. Then, while still a student, he sent some of his work to Noam Chomsky, one of the most important linguists in the world, who then wanted to meet him. “And he helped me to understand that I wasn’t completely crazy. Or maybe that there were at least two of us who were crazy...” Moro, who was born in 1962, is Director of the Institute for Advanced Study of Pavia (IUSS) and Director of the NeTS (Center for Neurocognition and Theoretical Syntax). He accompanies us in this last installment of our series on neuroscience, which is dedicated to the relationship between the brain and language. But he immediately does away with the laboratory feel: “When we observe language, we talk about man as a whole. And we cannot talk about man without talking about language.”

Why?
First, because it is the instrument with which man characterizes not only what he does, but also what he thinks about what he does–therefore, without language, there would be no possibility of self-awareness. Second, because the structure of human language, which holds the words together, is unique among all living beings: humans and only humans, to quote Wilhelm von Humboldt, “make infinite use of finite means.” This is syntax–finite elements (words) that build structures that could go on infinitely.  

Is syntax, therefore, the basic difference between human and animal language?
All animals communicate. If communication is passing along information, then even poppies communicate. But the codes used by all other living beings do not have a structure similar to human language. Only humans have the capacity to produce potentially infinite sequences of words, in which the same elements have different, sometimes opposite, meanings, depending on their order: Cain killed Abel, Abel killed Cain. In the 1970s, we saw that chimpanzees, which are very similar to us in many respects, are able to learn a considerable number of words (around 130), but are not  able to give them different meanings by changing their order. They have sequences of signals that are not expandable and that do not change meanings.

In what way does language depend on the brain?
In the second half of the 1800s, Paul Broca discovered a specific area of the brain that controls language. In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky discovered the fundamental mathematical properties of human languages. This discovery led to the hypothesis that syntax was also biologically determined, and not the fruit of arbitrary choices or conventions–that is, the rules on which it is based are not artificial cultural constructions, but rather depend on the neurobiological structure of the brain. They are innate. This discovery revolutionized linguistics, but also neuroscience in general, as demonstrated by the landmark text of Kandel, who introduced these themes in his latest edition.

How is this demonstrated?
One of the first experiments to prove that a specific neuronal activity corresponds to syntax was to construct syntactic errors in a language lacking semantic references, in order to observe the brain’s reaction. If I read, “The gulgo gianigeved the brales,” different networks are activated in me than when I read, “Gulgo the gianigeved brales the,” where syntax is violated.

So language is “inscribed” in our brain?
Yes, we are “designed in a special way”–there is a neurocerebral architecture, a network of circuits that condition the code of language. It is evident that this throws open questions that science will never be able to answer. For example, why do we human beings have this unique capacity to use the infinite and to have a conscious intuition of it?

Thus, the discoveries regarding language influence the conception of man.
They confirm our uniqueness among creation. The following syllogism applies: a) our language is unique among all living beings–other beings have similar languages, but without syntax; b) this language is an expression of our biological structure; c) therefore, our biological structure is unique. Note that we are not dealing with an observation based solely on comparison data among the various languages. Today, with a series of experiments and the techniques of neuroimaging, we are able to definitively link syntactic structures to the biological architecture of the brain. In the 1950s, when the brain was compared to a calculator and we were viewed only as machines, there was the illusion–as stated in a famous quotation by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel–of having discovered the “only thing missing for a complete understanding of the complexities of communication in the animal and in the machine.” The human being had been brushed off de facto as irrelevant. Chomsky brought him back on the scene through his “weak” variation: children.

In what sense?
He insisted on the biological nature of learning. From the hypothesis of a tabula rasa, where the child constructs his grammar through trial and error, we came to think that the brain contains all of the possible rules of all languages, but only those solicited by one’s environment definitively become his own. It is the so-called “learning by forgetting.” As children, we can learn all of the sounds of all languages; once we have passed, more or less, the limit of puberty, we can no longer free ourselves of the sounds of the mother tongue, and if we learn other languages, we mark them with an accent. Above all, we learn language quickly in a phase of life in which sophisticated logical operations are not within our range. Conversely, an adult, who is cognitively and culturally much better equipped, is unable to learn a language “by imitation,” as a child does. This means that we are “biologically designed” to learn them–it has nothing to do with intellectual comprehension, but is more similar to the way that we digest food, even if we know nothing about organic chemistry or gastroenterology.

Is it in this sense that you coined the term “stem mind”?
Yes. Today we only talk about “stem” with reference to biological potential, but to me it seems important to emphasize that the mind, too, has a “stem” aspect. At birth, we have a mind that is open to all possible linguistic structures. At a certain point, they become fixed, just as cells become fixed and specialized in tissues. Not everything is fixed, though–what remains (and will always remain) “stem” in man are curiosity and love.  

If its nature is biological, then how does language remain an experience?
Without experience, there would be no primer for learning. Experience is the first propeller of language and the unavoidable fact of reality. What we are doing is defining its limits, the “boundaries of Babel”–as I like to call them–within which we move, and which are inscribed in our body; we explain the degrees of freedom that we have. It’s a little like saying that anatomy explains how the eye functions, but experience makes us decide what to look at.

You often repeat that language is a mystery. How so? And what weight does this consideration have in science?
Language is a universe; like the physical universe, it does not let itself be “fully” explained. Its mystery constitutes its scandal, because the presumption to define it with a unique law clashes with the indefinability of man. There is no way to enclose it in reductive or deductive formulas. What is more, language is the instrument with which we attempt to describe language itself, and this creates an even more complex situation, perhaps too complex for the human mind, which will have to settle for a simple “because.” But the acceptance of mystery has a foundational role in science. If one does not include the possibility of recognizing it, then he starts off on the wrong foot, with an ideological dogma of cognitive omnipotence that has no basis, be it philosophical or empirical, let alone logical. Accepting mystery is a component, temporary or definitive, of the understanding of reality–it has to be a part of the scientific method.

What is the most important thing that you are learning in your work?
The synthesis of the appeal that language has for me is a phrase by Chomsky: “It’s important to learn to be amazed by simple facts.” “To learn,” because knowledge is not a talent, but the result of method and training; “to be amazed,” because without curiosity and wonder, one doesn’t even get out of bed in the morning; “simple facts,” because language, unlike other scientific domains, does not necessarily require sophisticated equipment to obtain the principal data. I have found all of this in language; I have learned, by following some teachers, to be amazed by simple facts and to form my opinion.

What do you mean when you affirm that we are incarnate words?
It no longer makes sense to think–as was the case in the 1970s and beyond–that language is software that runs on neutral hardware represented by our brain–language, if anything, is the only type of software generated by the hardware of the brain. Then, in all probability, it makes sense to think that the genes that contribute to the constitution of our brain, and therefore of the neurobiological structure that develops a language, are not disconnected from the rest of the organism–if it were like this, then human individuals without language would already have been born (obviously, I am not referring to deaf-mutes, who have, in sign language, expressive capabilities equivalent to language). So perhaps they are the same genes that express themselves in vital organs, as well. Therefore, if only one of them were lacking, the individual would not be born. I often say to my students that the flesh became word.

Can you explain that better?
It’s my provocative way to explain, in brief, that it doesn’t make sense to think of the human body as a lifeless container into which language is magically inserted–our language and our body are the same marvel. To us, they seem separated, because we do not comprehend the neurobiological nature of the former. Obviously–it’s worth noting–no theory about language will ever say anything about human creativity; this, as Descartes well understood, remains a mystery. Personally, I can’t imagine not considering it like this. Forever.

You wrote, “Giving a name to things is the true Big Bang that concerns us.”
In Genesis, God stops and listens to His creature give names. I always asked myself what it really meant to be made “in His image and likeness,” but in giving names to things we are like God, because it is a creative act, albeit partially. Of course, this does not exhaust the likeness, but it offers a very gentle and surprising image of it, at least for me.

What are the open challenges of today?
There are at least two: to identify the basic formal properties of syntax–the minimum particles and their values, so to speak–and to decipher what type of signal neurons exchange in linguistic phenomena.