I think this quote may speak to the question:

> The brain’s general object-recognition machinery is at the same level of abstractness as the language network. It’s not so different from some higher-level visual areas such as the inferotemporal cortex (opens a new tab) storing bits of object shapes, or the fusiform face area storing a basic face template.

In other words, it sounds like the brain may start with the same basic methods of pattern matching for many different contexts, but then different areas of the brain specialize in looking for patterns in specific contexts such as vision or language.

This seems to align with the research of Jenny Saffran, for example, who has studied how babies recognize language, arguing that this is largely statistical pattern matching.