Book review: Impossible Languages, Andrea Moro, The MIT Press, 2016, 145 pp.

Document Type : .

Authors
Amir Ghorbanpour 1
Zahra Khanalizadeh 2
1 PhD in Linguistics, Tarbiat Modares University
2 MA in Linguistics, Alzahra University
10.30465/lsi.2024.48508.1747
Abstract
Impossible Languages, written by the Italian linguist and neurologist Andrea Moro, and published in 2016 by the MIT Press, includes themes that were also covered in parts of Moro’s previous book, The Boundaries of Babel: The Brain and the Enigma of Impossible Languages (Moro, 2015; translated from Italian into English, with a foreword by Noam Chomsky). The book is organised in eleven chapters, and, together with the list of references and an index, contains a total of 145 pages. In this book, the author explores what makes human language unique and different from any other communication system — the so-called fingerprint of human language, as referred to in the book — and presents interesting theoretical and empirical evidence in favour of a biological interpretation of human language structure, which includes some of the latest findings from neuroimaging studies over the last two decades. The present article will briefly look at the content of the book.
Keywords
language
human
brain
linguistics
neurolinguistics
Chomsky, N. (1962). "Explanatory models in linguistics". Logic, methodology, and philosophy of science. E. Nagel, P. Suppes, & A. Tarski (eds.), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 528-550.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Corballis, M. C. (2002). From hand to mouth: The origins of language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jerne, N. (1985). “The generative grammar of the immune system”. Science, 229, 1057-1059.
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.
Moro, A. (2015). The boundaries of Babel: The brain and the enigma of impossible languages (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Moro, A. (2016). Impossible languages. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Pulvermüller, F., & L. Fadiga (2010). “Active perception: Sensorimotor circuits as a cortical basis for language”. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 11(5), 351-360.
Rizzolatti, G., L. Fogassi, & V. Gallese (2001). “Neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the understanding and imitation of action”. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 661-670. https://doi.org/10.1038/35090060
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
Language and Linguistics
Volume 19, Issue 38
September 2024
Pages 317-334