INNATENESS, AUTONOMY, UNIVERSALITY, AND THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF REGULAR AND IRREGULAR INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY

Muller's goal of bringing neuroscience to bear on controversies in lin guistics is laudable. However, some of his specific proposals about in nateness and autonomy are misguided. Recent studies on the neurobiolog y of regular and irregular inflectional morphology indicate that these two linguistic processes are subserved by anatomically and physiologi cally distinct neural subsystems, whose functional organization is lik ely to under direct genetic control rather than assembled by strictly epigenetic factors.