Many years ago I took courses in physiological psychology (I majored in psychology at a “rat-runner” department. Anyway they had films of people who had suffered brain damage/strokes. They would show a subject a picture of a comb, for example, and ask “what is it?”, and he’d answer “I don’t know”. Then they’d ask, “What do you do with it?” and he’d promptly answer, “Comb your hair”. They’d ask again, “What is it?” and again he’d say, “I don’t know”.
The brain stores verbs and nouns in different places. So grammar is a bit more than an invention by language teachers!
Thanks. For sure.
Does Noam Chomsky know that?
Interesting.
Eight months before my husband died of Alzheimers, we went to the doctor to get approved to renew his driver’s license. His heart, vision, and general health was good, but when the the doctor showed him a green light and asked him what it was he could not respond. I then asked him, “do you stop or go when you see it?” He answered “go”, but could not respond “green light.” We did not get his license renewed and I had to finally take lessons and get my license. Fortunately, the instructor allowed my husband to ride in the back seat while I had my lessons or I would have had the additional problem of needing to find someone to watch him while I was away taking lessons.