The Neural Basis of Language
Ángel López-García
University of Valencia
The continuity (distributed structure) and the discontinuity (modular structure) are not the exclusive property of neural webs that affect wide areas of the brain, but their possibility is implied in the microscopic base within themselves. This situation is found in all types of psychic activity: emotional, rational and linguistic, although in a different way in each of them. Language maximizes the coexistence of both types of nervous processing maintaining them in equilibrium from the first moment. A theory of language which is capable of assuming the two perspectives is needed, since it is the only one that is neurologically justified. In this book it is proposed that said theory be constructed on Gestaltic principles; this is because Gestaltic principles formally adjust to Topological rules, which allow us to, at the same time, be informed about the spatial reception of the world, specific to the dominated hemisphere, and its correlative verbalization through some form of natural language, which is specific to the dominant hemisphere.
Angel Lopez-Garcia is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Valencia (Spain), and he has been a visiting Professor at the universities of Virginia, Mainz, Minnesota, Tucumán and Aarhus. He helped to develop the Liminar Grammar model of Cognitive Linguistics as soon as 1980, and elaborated a series of applications to natural languages. Lately he is working on the relation between Linguistics and Biology. He is the author of The grammar of genes. How the Genetic Code Resembles the Linguistic Code (2005).
ISBN 9783895864056. LINCOM Studies in Neurolinguistics 03. 60 illustrations. 134pp. 2007.
