Modularity of Mind and Second Language Acquisition

Abstract

The concept of modularity has become significant in philosophy and psychology since the early 1980s, following the publication of Fodor's ground-breaking book The Modularity of Mind (1983). In the twenty-five years since the term ‘module’ and its cognates first entered the lexicon of cognitive science, the conceptual and theoretical landscape in this area has changed thoroughly. A critical issue in this regard has been the development of evolutionary psychology, whose proponents argue that the architecture of the mind is more pervasively modular than the Fodorian perspective allows. Where Fodor (2005) draws the line of modularity at the low-level systems underlying perception and language, post-Fodorian theorists such as Carruthers (2008) contend that the mind is modular through and through, that is, up to and including the high-level systems responsible for thought. The concept of modularity has also played a role in recent debates in epistemology, philosophy of language, and other core areas of philosophy.