These findings are contrary to theses which support the idea that the
brain evolved to support the development of symbolic language and
that the human brain is born with a structural sensitivity to
syntactic construction, such as Chomsky [13] would suggest.
Kanzi's abilities contradict these ideas
because none of his ancestors developed language skills in a
natural setting, his synaptic functions could not have been prepared
to receive language. Moreover, the idea that infants'
synaptic functions cannot acquire language skills once a certain level of
maturity is reached because of a genetic time clock, is put in perspective.
A newer view suggests that as a child reaches maturity, synaptic functions are
involved in many tasks that are not necessarily linguistically
related. If, during growth, language skills are not developed,
synaptic functions that would usually be involved in performing
linguistic tasks will be co-opted into performing other
tasks[20].