Are Neural Substrates of Language and Communication Distinct?

Universal Grammar serves as a basis for acquiring language competence, but it is not sufficient to acquire communicative competence. To be a competent sender or receiver of an utterance, one needs to be able to infer another person’s intentions or beliefs. In other words, one needs to have a theory of mind. Are then neural substrates of linguistic and communicative abilities distinct, too? The paper characterizes language as a specific human feature and briefly describes both language competence and communicative competence. Finally, it presents the results of an fMRI study according to which communicative and linguistic abilities rely on cerebrally (and computationally) distinct mechanisms.