Due by 5:00pm on Sunday, January 26: Discussion Post #1 on the Ning
Reflect on the readings. Do you have any questions about the texts? Are there any claims that you find problematic? Do you think language is a purely biological phenomenon? What parts of the brain are most important for the production and comprehension of speech? How do you conceptualize or process meaning? Do these readings inspire any special insights or motivations that could help advance your foreign-language abilities, retention, and recollection?
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These readings were very interesting and very new as I read them. I have never taken a psychology class so hearing the various terms and the features of the brain were hard to understand off the bat. I wonder if it’s because I do not have much background knowledge or know enough science behind how language works that to me language does not seem to be a purely biological phenomenon. It is sort of unbelievable how quickly we process language because of the complexity in the neurological planning and execution involved every time we use language. It is also crazy that over 95% of right-handed people have the left hemisphere as dominant for language. They say that the left hemisphere is more analytic or intellectual while right hemisphere is more creative or emotional. However, several activities usually involve both hemispheres. I wonder what that means for someone who damages their brain and only has the left side alive since the left is the dominant one for language. I also wonder how it would affect someone who’s language is ASL.
Further, the idea of localization is where a single area of the brain can be related to a single behavioral ability such as vision or speech. Therefore, with the Broca’s area, research has showed that damage to this area has resulted in a reduced ability to speak even though comprehension remained unimpaired. Also, damage to Wernicke’s area resulted in a reduced ability to comprehend speech, though the ability to speak was relatively unaffected. With this, I wonder again how it affects people who communicate through ASL. Does damage to the Broca’s area for them not affect them as much as it may to other language speakers?
Meaning is so complex. For me, I take a conventionalist position because I also think there is a sort of arbitrary relationship between words and things. “Different languages talk about the real word in different ways.” I immediately think of Spanish because of the masculinity and femininity applied to their words. I have also heard that different languages and cultures have more words for color or less. Therefore, some people may see more color than people who speak languages that don’t have words for the various colors. I think the same goes for isolated words as some people have seen certain words in more contexts than others. So an isolated word can have too much meaning for a certain individual while not as much for another. The variance in the order of words in different languages was also very interesting. If two people with different languages described the same incident, would they remember the same thing happening or do they pay attention to different things? It seems that we ascribe ideas based on our own ideas for the way in which we see the world.
After reading these chapters, I have found language to be much more complex than I thought it was. As I am only fluent in English, I never think of the semantics or realize how much processing is going on inside our brains since it is all so rapid. Specifically, with Korean, I noticed that some lexemes will be different from what I am used to so I will have to learn new collections of them. With learning Korean, I want to pay attention to collocations to give me a better picture of how language works so that I have better retention and recollection. This will be very useful to me as a learner as I do not do well with memorizing.
In a previous class, I learned about the development of brains with a specific emphasis on adolescent brain development. In my understanding of brain development, as the person grows older, the brain myelinates from the back to the front. Consequently, the way teenagers function and think is affected by this particular direction of development. As I was reading "how the brain handles language” of the assignment, I wondered if different stages of brain development, aka the age of someone, affect language learning/processing. Another question that arose during the reading was about dominance and hemispheres in terms of left-handed people. The text outlined the generally understood information about specialized intellectual functions of each hemisphere in right-handed people. The left hemisphere is dominant in certain activities like analytical tasks and logical organization while the right hemisphere is dominant for spatial orientation and emotional expression. However, it was not clear for left-handed people (just said that it wasn’t symmetrical) and did not mention the correlation of dominance and functions for ambidextrous people.
I didn’t find any claims to be particularly problematic except that the text only focused on the biological explanation of language processing, learning, and abilities. I believe that culture also affects language and therefore, language is not a purely biological phenomenon. From a biological perspective, taking biological evolution into account, I do not think that language evolved over time through purely biological means because there are abstract principles (grammar, structure, and other linguistic principles of language) that are not advantageous in a biological lens. There are cultural contexts that change the language: new vocabulary, new colloquial usage of words, and more.
According to the reading, Broca's area is correlated to the ability to speak while Wernicke’s area is involved with the person's ability to comprehend speech. This is supported by the theory of cerebral localization, which is supported by the work of neurologists Broca and Wernicke. However, there are other areas involved in the process of speaking, singing, listening, etc. in addition to the two main regions of the brain related to speech production and comprehension. Neurolinguistic processing also helps explain the way meaning is conceptualized in the brain before spoken.
In general, I think it is interesting to gain insights into how the brain works in terms of functions that are correlated to language. The information shared through the reading was truly insightful because I have never been exposed to, nor have I sought out the knowledge of, much of the content I encountered through this assignment. Reading about neurolinguistic processing and how the brain creates semantic fields to organize lexemes was like reading the dictionary definition of everyday, colloquial words such as appease. There were a few specific topics that I found useful/motivational in my personal learning. The topic of collocations is one I found interesting. It is something we all do naturally--to group vocabulary together based on its tendency to follow predictable context. The reading highlighted that because "collocations differ greatly between languages", they provide difficulties in learning a foreign language. As I begin my Korean language studies of new, harder vocabulary, I now understand the importance of not only memorizing words but linking them properly to obtain collocations of the new vocabulary.
Ever since I was a little kid I always asked my mom “why” followed by the rest of a question she did not know the answer to. In response, she’d try her best to answer. My inquisitiveness from then to the present has drawn me to study science as science provides insight and answers to a multitude of questions. I really enjoyed reading this week’s articles as I learned about language through a neuroscience perspective. I found the concept of lateralization intriguing and I do question how accurate or how localized certain functions truly are to one area of the brain. David Crystal does a nice job not oversimplifying this split in the brain’s functions. In past psychology classes, I had learned about Broca’s area (responsible for speech ability) and Wernicke’s area (responsible for speech comprehension) in relation to language. It was interesting to learn about other areas of the brain that were also related to speaking, writing, and listening such as Heschl’s gyri and Exner’s centre. Also from chapter 27, I was fascinated by the concept of coarticulation and how our brain works so quickly without us realizing all it is doing. The concept of slips of the tongue was also particularly intriguing as I have done this many times but never knew it had a real term to describe it. It is logical that these slips would occur in words that share grammatical construction or rhythm unit. It is kind of amazing that we do not make more speech errors like slips of the tongue. All of these brain areas make language possible and lay the biological foundation of our complex language abilities.
That being said, I do not believe that language is a purely biological phenomenon, especially when considering how advanced and complex human languages are. While neurolinguistics provides a thorough explanation of the processes that occur to comprehend and produce language, language is still more than solely biological. Language does have an undeniable biological basis which makes language possible as we all need to develop certain structures and brain areas in order to physically create language. In my opinion, the biological aspects are just requirements for language but I believe other components such as culture and other external forces are just as important to language. Biology certainly helped language develop and reinforced language as favorable but culture and social interaction are what gave words, sentences, structure, and meaning to language. Biology alone cannot define words or explain how people know the meaning of their conversations as that is at least partly learned from culture.
I found the argument on defining meaning very intricate in chapter 29. There is a stark dichotomy between Plato’s naturalist view that the sound of the word and its meaning are intrinsically connected and Aristotle’s conventionalist view that the sound of the word and its meaning have no connection and the relationship is arbitrary. As the article mentions, these are two extreme ideologies and have evidence against both of them. I also did wonder about the difference between sense and reference from the How we mean article. What does it mean to talk about the world outside of language exactly? Crystal makes a profound and sophisticated argument that languages understand and discuss the world in varying ways that creates a split between sense and reference. He appears to argue that by only thinking about the world in terms of one language that our perspective of the world will be very limited. Not only do other languages offer other ways to communicate but they change how we perceive the world and allow us to see how random the relationship between words and meaning can be.
I also enjoyed reading about the different ways we change the meaning of our language by changing the word, grammatical structure, sound, spelling, or even capitalization. I especially think intonation is interesting as I once learned that a large part of anything we say is based on our tone. This also raised the question for me of how tone and intonation can be changed for languages that rely on a set tone already such as Mandarin? How exactly can one change the inflection of a word to reflect one’s mood when the word’s meaning relies on a specific tone?
The concept of collocations gives me hope when learning a new language as I can hope to learn natural sayings or begin to understand words and phrases. I think collocations can be useful once you start hearing certain words used together frequently then you gain a sense of meaning and logical understanding for that word. These collocations also can provide cultural insight that helps you understand what kind of sayings or idioms are used in a culture. By learning words and their context I hope to increase my language comprehension.
Well said, Mallory. I, too, was struck by the connection to Plato and Aristotle. We'll talk a little bit about forms and empiricisms in class on Tuesday. There's an entire subfield of linguistics dedicated to the Philosophy of Language. Beyond the Natural Philosophy of Classical Antiquity, you may also find some interesting commentaries in the works of Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Arendt, etc. Additionally, the Psychology of Language- Freud, Jung, Janet Werker, also plays an important role in these same discussions.
I believe biology played a major part in the development and production of language. However, I do not believe that language is solely a biological phenomenon. In order to physically speak, which most civilizations have done, we must have to have developed the lungs, the vocal folds within the larynx (voice box), and the articulators. Humans needed the ability to send messages from their brains to their mouths. However, if these structures and functions did not offer any benefit, their existence would have been lost during natural selection. This helps support the notion that language is a biological phenomenon. Humans that could communicate emotions and knowledge through sounds are more likely to survive as they could share knowledge and develop strategies to maximize efficiency. However, many other creatures in the animal kingdom can produce noise, but they lack the same level, or even remotely close to that of the construction of language within humans.
Based on the readings above, I believe multiple areas of the brain are critical for production and comprehension of speech. Although it is discussed that the Broca’s areas plays a role in the ability of speech, and the Wernicke’s area contributes towards the comprehension of speech, the brain is extremely complex and interconnected in function. These two regions are not the sole neural areas of speech comprehension and execution, but rather players on the board.
When referring to sense and reference in chapter 29, what are the differences between these two terms? From my understanding of it, sense is the word within the language whereas reference is more so the “true meaning,”, concept and or the actual representation of something but not within a language. Does this follow the correct direction of semantics definitions of words?
From a neurological standpoint, I wonder how the brain processes language in bi, and trilingual individuals. I have heard that by learning multiple languages, one’s likelihood of developing dementia decreases and increases neuroplasticity; however, are there certain language combinations that enhance neuronal connection/rearrangement more than others? Let us take German and English. English is classified as a (West) Germanic language, meaning that it is closely related to other Germanic languages such as Swedish, Dutch, and German. Because these languages have overlapping principles and are similar in derivation, is neuroplasticity affected to a greater or lesser extent compared to a brain that knows English and Korean?
Great post, Eli. When we get to our unit on articulatory phonetics, we'll spend a lot of time covering the physiology of speech.