Eric Heinz Lenneberg

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Eric Heinz Lenneberg (born September 19, 1921 in Düsseldorf , died on May 31, 1975 in White Plains , Westchester, New York , United States ; in Germany more commonly abbreviated as Eric H. Lenneberg) was a German-born US neurologist and linguist . Lenneberg was one of the most famous linguists of the 20th century and is considered a co-founder of biolinguistics . His scientific influence in Germany was probably rather insignificant. From 1935 to 1945 he lived in Brazil , where he and his family had fled from the Nazis as a Jew .

Career

He spent his childhood (until 1933) in Düsseldorf. There he attended elementary school .

He studied (after his stay in Brazil) in the United States. He did his BA in Chicago in 1949 and studied linguistics there.

As a professor of psychology and neurobiology, he has taught at Harvard Medical School , the University of Michigan and the Medical School of Cornell University with a focus on language acquisition and cognitive psychology . As a scientist, he was a member of several scientific organizations in the USA; through the cooperation z. B. with Noam Chomsky and George A. Miller he was a respected researcher.

In his book Biological Basics of Language (the only book in German translation) he propagated the thesis of the "critical period" in language development ; a matter that has been discussed controversially around the world and is often referred to as a time window . Lenneberg said that anyone who did not learn to speak at the age of 14 would never learn it (completely) again. The " lateralization of the brain " was just completed at this age - and an injury to the language center could mean the loss of language at this age , where it could be compensated for beforehand. Put simply: "We have to assume that the child's ability to learn language is a consequence of maturation (...) Primary language cannot be acquired with equal ease at all ages." The linguist David Crystal writes et al. a., the critical period hypothesis is controversial because the pathological evidence is imprecise. The argumentation within language development is also anything but clear. Even neuropsychology should consider that the lateralization of the brain is completed long before puberty , which means that the definition of the "critical period" is very imprecise. The relationship between lateralization and language is ambiguous. Sun also reported Hannelore Grimm and Sabine Weinert points out that older assumptions for lateralization were incorrect, since it already in newborns give first developments referred to in lateralization. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Lenneberg has greatly enriched the discussion on language acquisition with his numerous publications and research.

Lenneberg also turned against the assumptions in the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf , specifically against the claim that language influences thinking . The thesis was very popular among scientists and educators in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s . Lenneberg believed that before two facts could be related they had to be described separately as such.

Although Lenneberg was a respected scientist in the United States, his influence in Germany remained limited. His main work, Biological Foundations of Language, was published in Germany only three years before his death.

In many countries, however, Lenneberg was known and valued as a linguist. He held a visiting professorship in Recife (Brazil). He was lecturer at the Academia Nacional de Neurologie do Brasil, chairman of the Tübingen conference on "Language as Behavior" at the Max Planck Institute; he was a permanent member of the International Symposium on Neuropsychology and participant in the conference on Mental Retardadion and advisor to UNESCO. 1964–1965 he was visiting professor for psychology at the University of Zurich . In 1975 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Publication (translation)

English title (selection)

  • Biological Foundations of Language . New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967. ISBN 0-471-52626-6
  • The Capacity of Language Acquisition in Fodor and Katz, 1964. Fodor, Jerry and Jerrold Katz, eds. 1964.
  • New Directions in the Study of Language (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964
  • The Structure of Language . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. The Fodor & Katz volume is a collection of papers around early Chomskyan linguistics, phonology, grammar, semantics.

See also

literature

  • 50 Years Later: A Tribute to Eric Lenneberg's Biological Foundations of Language. Special edition of the Open Access journal biolinguistics , Volume 11, 2017, full text (PDF) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ according to Leopoldina (1975)
  2. ↑ a name that is extremely rare in Germany; see: http://geogen.stoepel.net/index.html
  3. ↑ Blurb in "Biological Foundations of Language", Frankfurt 1972
  4. ↑ a b Ulric Neider, Daniel Tapper, Eleanor J. Gibson: http: //ecommons.library.cornell.edo.handle/1813/17813  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective . Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the Cornell University Faculty Memorial Statement@1@ 2Template: dead link / ecommons.library.cornell.edo.handle  
  5. ↑ Eric Heinz Lenneberg at neurotree.org
  6. ↑ on the problem of the "critical period": Norbert Kühne : Aspects and Problems of Early Development and Upbringing (1); Speech formation - language in therapy and education (2); In: Teaching Materials Pedagogy - Psychology (No. 694), Stark Verlag / Mediengruppe Pearson , Hallbergmoos 2012–2016
  7. ↑ and Steven Pinker: Sprachinstinkt, Munich 1998, p. 337 ff
  8. ↑ Wolf Singer , Director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, in a workshop discussion with the McKinsey Initiative; Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 29, 2001
  9. ↑ The term comes from ethology , writes David Crystal in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language , Frankfurt / New York 1993, which researches the origin of species-specific behavior: "It was found that in some species (e.g. rats, geese) as The prerequisite for normal development is that certain stimuli must be absorbed in certain phases. "(P. 263)
  10. ↑ "Laterality is understood as the development in the structure and function of pair organs or two areas of an unpaired organ that appear in a mirror image arrangement and are distributed over the right and left hemispheres of the brain." From: Wilhelm Arnold , Hans Jürgen Eysenck , Richard Meili : Lexicon der Psychologie, Vol. 2 ; Herder Verlag Freiburg, Basel, Vienna 1971; P. 406
  11. ↑ in Steven Pinker : Language instinct ; Munich 1998, p. 351 ff
  12. ↑ Biological foundations of language, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1972
  13. ↑ This is the first language a person learns; the mother tongue as the basis for language development
  14. ^ Biological foundations of language, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 1972, p. 220
  15. ^ The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 1993, p. 263
  16. ↑ language development ; in: Rolf Oerter , Leo Montada : Developmental Psychology , p. 517 ff, Beltz Verlag, Weinheim 2002, p. 541
  17. ^ Benjamin Lee Whorf: Language, Thought, Reality: Contributions to Metalinguistics and Philosophy of Language. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1984. ISBN 978-3-499-55174-1 ; a very successful book in Germany in the second half of the last century. Steven Pinker, however, says in his book "Sprachinstinkt" that Whorf never spoke to the Indians about whose language habits he made statements; Steven Pinker, p. 71 ff
  18. ↑ Member entry of Eric Heinz Lenneberg at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on May 11, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Lenneberg, Eric Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lenneberg, Eric H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American linguist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1975
Place of death White Plains