The phrase "a capacity for language" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when discussing someone's ability to understand, produce, or use language effectively.
Example: "Children have a remarkable capacity for language, allowing them to learn new words and grammar rules quickly."
Alternatives: "an ability to communicate" or "a talent for language".
"The work was very significant in showing the extent to which babies have a capacity for language before they actually begin producing language," said Dr. Barbara Landau, a professor of cognitive science at Johns Hopkins.
For example, language use is part of the nature of a human being, but there are cases of humans who, due to neurological damage or simply failure to be exposed to language prior to the onset of adolescence, fail to develop a capacity for language use.
Among her many gifts Ellen had a capacity for languages which she could smoothly change between in multinational settings.
This suggests that hominin species prior to Man had a capacity for "proto-language," and that this underwent a transformation at the origin of modern Homo sapiens 150 thousand years ago [Priddle and Crow, 2013a].
He added, "The scans confirmed our expectation that this patient had a greater capacity for language than he demonstrated".
The idea would be that this gene was defective in some children, who consequently lacked a natural capacity for language learning.
We're born with an in-built capacity for language.
So we evolved the capacity for language, a "less yucky and more efficient way to get to know our peers, since we can talk to several friends at once but only groom one at a time," as Christakis and Fowler put it.
This suggests that sulcal patterns emerging early in foetal life and predating the onset of epilepsy have a lasting impact on the capacity for language reorganization.
We introduce an anatomical notion of 'reserve capacity' for language reorganization by analogy to reserve capacity for memory outcome after temporal lobe resection.
