I do not think the brain’s function in language using is a purely biological phenomenon. Language is created by humans in order to communicate with other people. I have watched a Ted Talk about how language shapes the way we think, in the video the speaker gives a lot of examples of how people who speak different languages develop different skills and different understandings in the same term. I think different languages activate different parts of the brain, and it is developed after people are born. One of the most interesting examples the speaker gives in the presentation is that there is a tribe in Africa that the way they Hi to each other is to ask the direction people are going, and they only have direction words such as North, South, West, and East. Humans do not have a compass in their body like some kind of birds, and it is impossible for most people to tell where is the north or west. However, because the language they speak they are required and trained to tell the direction immediately, or they cannot say hi to each other.
I agree with most parts of the readings and I do believe sentences exist to enable us to make sense of words. However, in the simplest information exchange, it only requires one party to understand sentence structure in order to communicate as long as both parts have enough vocabulary.
In the reading, I can really relate to the part when the author talks about how English only has word uncle to represent mother’s brother and father’s brother and in other languages they are in different words. China is the most populated country in the world, and centuries ago, the family usually had multiple children. In order to differentiate each of the people had to come up with different words for each family member. In Mandarin, not only there are different words for mother’s brother and father’s brother, but also different words for younger and older brother. It is also the same case for grandparents and cousins. Another reason Chinese people use different words for different family members is that Chinese culture really emphasizes seniority in the family, different words for family members help people to find the person in charge of the family too.
According to the reading, the author talks about how there are left and right hemispheres of the brain and the function of each other. I know that right-handed people are dominated with the left hemisphere and left-handed people is dominate with the opposite hemisphere, but I did not know the right hemisphere is in charge of language, and even 60% of lefthanded people has their left hemisphere dominant for language. I wonder if there is any study shows how people with different hemispheres dominance specifically left-handed people with different dominant hemispheres have different performances in their daily life, jobs, the way they think, etc.
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Interesting. Would you please share the TedTalk link(s)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k here is the link to the TedTalk