normal cognitive abilities and, second, persons for whom normal cognitive abilities are grossly impaired and yet language remains intact. Whilst extensive lesions in the left hemisphere perisylvian area can render persons unable to produce or perceive language (global aphasia), there is no known acquired case where language is completely intact in the face of severe non-linguistic deterioration. Thus, functional module status cannot be granted to language processing based on this evidence. However, other evidence from developmental studies has been presented (most famously by Pinker) as supporting a language module, namely the purported dissociation between Specific Language Impairment (SLI), where language is disrupted whilst other mental abilities are not, and Williams Syndrome (WS) where language is said to be spared despite severe mental deficits. More recent and empirically robust work has shown that these claims may be inaccurate, thus, considerably weakening support for dissociation. For example, work reviewed by Brock and Mervis and Beccera demonstrated that language abilities in WS are no more than would be predicted by non-linguistic abilities. Further, there is considerable debate concerning whether SLI is actually a language disorder or whether its aetiology is due to a more general cognitive (e.g. phonological) problem. Thus, the evidence needed to complete the picture for modularity intact language coupled with gross intellectual deterioration is not forthcoming. Consequently, developmental data offers little support for the notion that language processing occurs within a module. Thus, the evidence from double dissociations does not support modularity, although lack of dissociation is not evidence against a module; this inference cannot be logically made. Lack of information encapsulation Indeed, if language were a module it would be informationally encapsulated. Yet, there is evidence to suggest that this is not the case. For instance, in the McGurk effect, watching lips say one phoneme whilst another is played creates the percept of a blended phoneme. Further, Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard and Sedivy (1995) demonstrated visual information mediating syntactic processing. In addition, the putative language module should process only that information relevant to language (i.e., be domain-specific). Yet evidence suggests that areas purported to subserve language also mediate motor control and non-linguistic sound comprehension. Although it is possible that separate processes could be occurring but below the resolution of current imaging techniques, when all this evidence is taken together the case for information encapsulation is weakened. Alternative views The alternative, as it is framed, is that language occurs within a