Notes on the Biological Basis for Language: The Brain, The Dual Mechanism Model and the Two Stages of Early Child Syntax. 1 Joseph Galasso CSUN Dept of Linguistics 1. Introduction Language is quite possibly the most unique of all complex systems known to man, with little if any antecedence to its nature and origin tracible back to a Darwinian world. It appears that mere communicative needs as would be determined by a Darwinian model could not have possibly provided any great selective pressure to produce such an elaborate system as language that relies heavily on properties of abstraction. What one gains from language rather is an inner symbolic thought process, autonomous and private onto itself, built upon a mentalese which is to a large degree not optimal for serving mere communicative needs. Complicating the picture even more so is the fact that language seems to sit in a kind of ‘no- man’s land’, at a crossroads between being an innate, biologically- deteremined system (on the one hand), and a learned, environmentally driven system (on the other). In other words, language is one and the same both subjective and objective in nature. Because of this, it seems any approximate understanding of language must be informed by a hybrid model of its dualistic nature. Such a model must straddle and bring together both Abstract/Mental and Physical/Material worlds. This coming together should by no means be interpreted as an attempt ‘to make nice’ with opposing philosophical camps, but rather, hybrid modeling of language and mind goes far in addressing the very complex and abstract nature of language, particularly in light of the current knowledge linguists have gained over what I think has been a very prosperous half century of linguistics. What makes the above statements tricky, however, is that while there may be some level of (mental) learning going on for our first language, presumably based on the (material) frequency of input, (as with vocabulary learning), it has to be a ‘strange’ kind of learning unconnected to mere conscious observation and will. For instance, a child cannot willfully choose not to learn his/her native language. Nor can a child (subconsciously) fail to observe the hidden 1 Readings pulled from my text ‘Minimum of English Grammar’, Vol 1. Cognella.