Spring is clearly here, even in the Tropics of Guatemala. 

We have a 5-6 month (May to October) rainy season and a 6-7 month (October to May) dry season.  But in fact the dry season is two very distinct periods: a dry winter season with cold waves from the arctic and beginning about 1 March warm humid nights with increasing humidity and oppressive atmosphere until the rains break in May (a typical pre-monsoon season).  But Spring begins before any changes in the weather.  Spring everywhere begins before any change in the weather could seem to trigger it.

In his seminal work Language and Mind world-renowned linguist Noam Chomsky discusses the development of language. In a series of telling essays and lectures he presents the linguistic contributions to past, present, and future studies of the mind and details the distinctive nature of language. Combining concepts from biology and psychology he attempts to trace the origin of language, all the while analyzing what these origins imply about the nature of the brain. One Chomskyan theory of particular interest deals with language acquisition and is labeled "Universal Grammar" (Chomsky 99)1. In the following paragraphs I will present and discuss this theory and attempt to situate it with the neurobiological conclusions reached by our class this semester.

"All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets IT- everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He's filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows its not the tune that counts but IT." -from On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1)

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