That: "Makes me wonder if accents are not just random assortments of pronunciation rules, but if there is a biological basis."
It’s clearly wrong as second generation immigrants don’t share their parents accent.
It’s clearly wrong as second generation immigrants don’t share their parents accent.
Your accent is entirely depend on your ability to distinguish and form sounds something which kids naturally pick from their environment but become harder as you lose plasticity.
If you work out a lot you will have larger muscles and be stronger. And if you worked out a lot in the past, you'll likely be able to put on muscle stronger.
A lot of things that we experience change our bodies and brains. The question is, do they do it in a consistent way that we can pinpoint? Like finding a little structure that is more developed in people who learned Mandarin as their first language vs English, and that lets you distinguish tones better.
I thought we were considering the idea that structures helping develop an accent rather than other might be inherited as sort of extension to Chomsky theory of language. Which would be an idea somewhat worth considering but easily disprovable.