A Childhood Tragedy Gives Insights into Language Learning

A pioneer in brain and memory research, Dr. Daniel Alkon has written a new book, called "Memory's Voice: Deciphering the Mind-Brain Code." He uses the example of one disturbed person to look at how the brain remembers -- a childhood friend who was abused by her father and emotionally scarred. Alton suggests that people like his friend never complely unlearn behavior brought upon by such traumas, and that the impressions made on a child's memory will permanently linger in the complexes of the brain.

Linguist and author Naomi S. Baron. Her book, "Growing up with Language" (Addison-Wesley publishers, 1992) examines the process by which children learn to use language. Baron is Professor of Linguistics and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the American University in Washington DC. (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

Steven Pinker, a psycholinguist at MIT and director of its Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, has a new book on how language works: "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language" (Morrow). He argues that language is not simply a cultural invention taught by parents and schools, but a biological system, --an instinct-- partly learned, and partly innate. To Pinker, a three year old toddler is a "grammatical genius", capable of obeying adult rites of language, similar to web-spinning in spiders or sonar in bats.