Brain and Language 78, 397–401 (2001) doi:10.1006/brln.2001.2473, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on REPLY Language Is More Than Its Parts: A Reply to Bird, Howard, and Franklin (2001) Kevin Shapiro and Alfonso Caramazza Harvard University Published online May 29, 2001 Bird, Howard, and Franklin (2000) proposed a model that purports to account parsimoniously for two kinds of deficits often observed in patients with brain damage: semantic category-specific deficits (i.e., problems accessing knowledge about ani- mals, artifacts, or other categories of objects) and grammatical class-specific deficits (problems accessing lexical representations of nouns or verbs). In a commentary on this model, which we called the extended sensory/functional theory (ESFT; Sha- piro & Caramazza, 2001), we argued that the assumptions upon which it is based are not empirically credible and that even if they were, the model would not be adequate to account for all cases of putative grammatical category-specific deficits. The proponents of the ESFT have now responded to our criticism by defending the core assumptions of the model and by questioning our explanation of cases we judged to be problematic for it (Bird, Howard, & Franklin, 2001). In our view, their response is flawed in two crucial respects. First, some of the empirical claims made in defense of the ESFT are either misleading or plainly inaccurate. Second, and more importantly, we believe that the strictures that Bird and colleagues would impose on the collection and interpretation of data have the practical effect of redefining the topic of inquiry to avoid the question that is of greatest interest—namely, how spoken language is produced. We will first deal briefly with the inaccuracies in Bird and colleagues’ response, after which we will return to the broader theoretical issue at stake. To begin with, the arguments that Bird and colleagues make in defense of the sensory/functional theory, on which the ESFT is based, are substantially irrelevant. First they assert that even ‘‘small’’ differences in the ratios of sensory to nonsensory features attributed by normal subjects to living and nonliving things are ‘‘worth not- ing.’’ We contend that even if these differences were statistically reliable, they would not be ‘‘worth noting’’ because they are not large enough to support the kinds of apparently categorical distinctions that they are supposed to underlie. 1 In other words, The writing of this article was supported in part by NIH/NIDCD Grant DC04542. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Alfonso Caramazza, Cognitive Neuropsychology Lab- oratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, William James Hall, Room 930, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Fax: (617) 496-6262. E-mail: caram@wjh.harvard.edu. 1 Apropos of this issue, Bird et al. suggest that at least one empirically derived set of feature ratios (Hodges et al., 1996) shows little difference between nonliving and living items because musical instru- ments are included as nonliving, though ‘‘it has been suggested that musical instruments tend to be 397 0093-934X/01 $35.00 Copyright  2001 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.