J Neurol
DOI 10.1007/s00415-017-8662-1
PIONEERS IN NEUROLOGY
Eric Heinz Lenneberg (1921–1975)
Elia Zanin1 · Andrea Moro2 · Stefano Sandrone3 
Received: 7 October 2017 / Revised: 24 October 2017 / Accepted: 30 October 2017
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2017
Eric Heinz Lenneberg was born on September 19, 1921 in
Düsseldorf, Germany, where he attended school until 1933
[1]. Then, he had to move to Brazil with his family because
of the widely spreading Nazi anti-Jewish persecution in
Europe. In 1945, Lenneberg moved to the United States:
he obtained a B.A. degree in 1949 from the University of
Chicago [1, 2] and, six years later, a Ph.D. in Psychology
and Linguistics from Harvard University [3]. At the Harvard
Medical School, he studied neuroscience as a Russell Sage
fellow [1]. He then taught at Harvard University, worked in
the Center for Cognitive Studies [3] and carried out research
on language development in children at the Children’s Hos-
pital Medical Center in Boston as a member of Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology [1, 2]. Shortly afterwards, he
became a member of United States Public Health Service
(USPHS), specifically of the Mental Health Service Admin-
istration [1].
In 1964, Lenneberg published The capacity of language
acquisition, a paper written under the influence of the revo-
lutionary observations made by Noam Chomsky [4]. From
1964 to 1965, Lenneberg was Visiting Professor of Psy-
chology at the University of Zurich [1]. Two years later he
was appointed Professor of Psychology at the University
* Elia Zanin
elia.zanin89@gmail.com
1 view of language as an exclusively social product [6, 7].
Ospedale Riabilitativo di Alta Specializzazione di Motta
di Livenza, Spinal Cord Injury and Severe Acquired Brain
Injury Center, 31045 Motta di Livenza (TV), Italy
2
University School for Advanced Study, IUSS, 27100 Pavia,
Italy
3
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s
College London, London SE5 8AF, United Kingdom
of Michigan and fellow member of the Center for Human
Growth and Development [1, 2].
1967 was a critical year for Lenneberg, literally and fig-
uratively: it was in that year that he published Biological
foundations of language. This seminal book demonstrated
the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to investigate
the biological origin of linguistic competence by means of
theoretical data, empirical findings and clinical observations.
He overtly acknowledged Chomsky for his influence, and
Chomsky himself addressed key aspects about the formal
nature of language in the appendix [3]. Lenneberg exploited
linguistic theoretical models to interpret clinical and cross-
species data. He relied on syntax to support the hypothesis
of a common structure across human languages [3, 4]. As
noticed by Chomsky, Lenneberg conceived the human lan-
guage faculty as a species-specific trait [4] by focusing on
syntactic dimension [5]. Given that children, and human
beings in general, do not process syntactic structures under-
lying a sentence based on statistical computation, they have
to be equipped with a specific biological structure allowing
them to parse the ‘hidden structure’ of a sentence [3, 6]. His
modern approach paved the way not only for the integra-
tion of anatomical and comparative observations, but also
of aphasiology, genetic, physiological, morphological data
and theoretical linguistics to grasp the complexity of human
language [3, 5]. Lenneberg and Chomksy contributed more
than anyone else to grounding the study of human language
within the biological domain, in contrast with the dominant
Even though some anatomical and physiological specialisa-
tions of peripheral structures could explain different features
in the natural languages, Lenneberg suggested that the most
determinant aspect of the linguistic faculty was the cerebral
factor [3, 8].
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By relying on Chomsky’s intuition based on theoretical
syntactic data, Lenneberg was a pioneer in providing evi-
dence in favour of a biological predisposition for the acquisi-
tion of human language, which is an established notion now-
adays [3, 5, 8]. He did not underestimate the environmental
dimension within the linguistic domain: he hypothesised
the need of the so-called raw material (i.e., the language
spoken by adults) for a normal development of language
[3]. He compared this need to the relationship between
feeding and development: the linguistic raw material is the
language spoken by adults, which acts like a releaser for
the maturation of language [3]. Children are equipped with
the same neural structure (acknowledged importance of left
hemisphere from neuropsychological observations) and can
learn any language with the same degree of facility/difficulty
as observed by Chomsky some years earlier [9].
A further pivotal concept introduced by Lenneberg is the
critical period: a normal development of linguistic function
must take place during the first few years of life [10]. After
this period (spanning, more or less, from age five to puberty)
language acquisition is much more difficult because of a
lower cerebral plasticity and neural reorganisation, and hem-
ispheric lateralisation has been established [3, 7, 8]. This
is because ‘cortical specializations are not present at birth,
but become only gradually established during childhood, in
a process very similar to that of embryological history’ [8].
When considering any brain damage during childhood, a
crucial role is played by the age when the damage happens:
the prognosis will be directly related to the age at which it
occurred [3, 8].
Another pioneering idea concerned the relationship
between the genetic factor and language [8]. By compre-
hending the complexity of human language, from both the
biological and the linguistic perspectives, Lenneberg never
thought it could be possible to explain human language
in terms of genetic dimension, thus defining as shaky any
assumption about specific genes for human language [3, 8].
This idea is still supported nowadays by the impossibility of
finding any proof which may support a relationship between
syntax and genes, thus suggesting that syntax does not fol-
low the classic Mendelian genetic rules [6].
In 1968, Lenneberg was appointed Professor of Psychol-
ogy and Neurobiology at Cornell University [1, 3]. He was
13
J Neurol
also Visiting Professor at the Universidade Federal de Per-
nambuco, Recife, Brazil and organised a meeting on Lan-
guage and Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute, Tubingen,
Germany [1]. Furthermore, he collaborated with UNESCO
as a consultant, and in 1976, along with his wife Elizabeth,
published a book for UNESCO entitled Foundations of
language development: a multidisciplinary approach [1].
Lenneberg was a member, amongst others, of the Academia
Nacional de Neurologia do Brasil, the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, the Linguistic Society of
America, the American Psychological Association, and the
Society for Research in Child Development [1]. He died on
May 31, 1975, aged 53, while working on a clinical project
in neuropsychology at the Westchester division of the New
York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center [2].
Compliance with ethical standards 
Conflicts of interest  The corresponding author states that there is no
conflict of interest.
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