Dual stream models of perception, including speech, have a long history. These models are often challenged by demonstrations of cross-stream interactions that have led some to challenge the usefulness of the dichotomy. I will argue that these challenges miss the fundamental claim of dual stream models, which are inherently perceptuo-centric, and fail to appreciate that from a different task-dependent perspective, the same architecture is not dual stream at all, but continuous. This is no contradiction and instead falls out directly from the task-dependent nature of these models. I will present new lesion data reinforcing this task dependence, emphasizing an asymmetry between expressive and receptive tasks, and I will show how this asymmetry itself falls out of a basic motor control architecture, the evolutionary precursor to speech and language networks. Recently, this approach has been applied to the neurobiology of syntax. I will give a brief history of the neurology of syntax and describe a new model built on a motor control architecture but preserving the representational core of modern linguistic theory.