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Word Types and Word Order
The brain has the innate capacity to easily implement the rules or patterns that recognize word
types and word orders (i. e., grammar), as well as storing the words and their meanings.
Since people of many cultures create languages independently, this means the capacity for acquiring and using language must have a genetic basis. Language appears to have its own neural architecture, or set of modules and sub-modules. These modules operate independently of other cognitive functions such as perception, reasoning, and knowledge-acquisition.
Dramatic evidence supporting the theory that the ability to create language from scratch is pre-wired in the brain at birth comes from studies of two sign languages in widely separated populations of deaf people, one in Israel, the other in Nicaragua. In these two populations, people created new languages from scratch, languages that could not possibly have been transmitted culturally. Linguists discovered that both languages function by the same grammatical rules as languages worldwide. The only difference is the channel of transmission of meaning—via signing instead of speaking.
Although selective pressure drove evolution of the brain adaptation for spoken language, which all humans use today, the same does not apply to written language, which only some humans have. To acquire written language, you have to learn it, because it’s a technological development, not an adaptation. (Written language emerged from idiographic representations of spoken language.)