Some thoughts about the brain/mind/language interface

An historical survey of the approaches to the neural basis of language and the modularity question is summarized. Evidence from aphasia, event-related potentials (ERPs), Specific Language Impairments (SLIs) in children, asymmetry of abilities as shown by linguistic ‘savants’, sign language, separation of conceptual and linguistic knowledge, other disorders such as prosopagnosia and visual agnosia is presented to support the view that human language ability is autonomous and independent of other cognitive abilities with which it interacts in use.