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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Discussion post sept 10 .pdf
I found the two articles very intriguing because I never would have thought to combine linguistics with biology. A lot of the anatomy terms flew over my head while reading the articles so I can't cite direct examples. It was interesting that learning a language is biological and that everyone can learn a foreign language. I found it cool that the dominant language region in a brain for right-handed people is on the left. Their right hemisphere is more focused on creativity as opposed to the logical/analytical right side. It should’ve been intuitive that comprehension and speaking processes are handled by different areas of the cortex but I do not naturally think about the roles of brain features. Now I know that the Broca area is in charge of speaking and Wernicke’s area is focused on comprehension ability. From the article discussing meaning, there are several factors from which words contain meaning or create a sense of meaning. The intonation, word choice, spelling, capitalization, and grammatical structure all contribute to the meaning derived from vocabulary. I am definitely a lot more motivated to pay attention to the word structure and how it affects the overall meaning while learning Korean.
I thought that the text “How the brain handles Language” was a little difficult to understand for me to form an opinion on. I did think the tongue slip theory was interesting. It reminded me of a freudian slip which involves revealing some subconscious thoughts. However they are clearly different since a tongue slip sometimes makes no sense like with the example since one cannot cake a bake. So this cannot be revealing a subconscious thought. It seems like both hemispheres of the brain function together for comprehension and production working together depending if the person is right handed or left handed. However, there are certain parts within the cortex like Wernick and Broca that are specific to the skills of speaking and comprehension respectively.
Reading the texts on the meanings & analysis gave me a whole new point of view. I had never thought about the various ‘meanings’ of the word mean. The lack of terms that specify relationship clarification like aunt or uncle struck since I always was concerned about this as a child. Whos side of the family is this individual from since there was never any explanation just saying aunt or uncle. I found the four types of relationships interesting since i never thought of the use of words in these ways described. I found incompatibility and mutually exclusive words since it never occurred to me that it is not possible to have mutually exclusive items in a sentence.
Crystal's observations on neat linguistic delineation in a blurry world is something I often reflect on as an importance of foreign language learning. The more semantic points we have to describe a reference, the closer we can come to describing reality. I think her notion of "reference" is something I aim to keep in mind throughout my study of Bahasa Indonesia-- focusing on what lexemes signify in the real world versus how they relate to English terms. In neurolinguistic terms, I find that the closer one can be to the neurolinguistic processes of L1, the more closely they can find themselves to fluency. This is something I've been keeping in mind with the role of English in my learning of BI. Currently, my linguistic processing requires a conceptualization in English (or German, Spanish, or French), then contextualization into Bahasa Indonesia, careful syntactic construction, and then careful phonologic production. The more compact this process can be, the easier I'll find myself being able to speak with greater fluency. Even as I begin at the basics of pronouns, I learn to compartmentalize in a completely different way, with a formal/informal first person and a non-gendered third person. I am building a "sense" from the perspective of BI.
I hesitate to classify language as solely biological in nature, although I recognize the consistencies in language acquisition and neurolinguistic faculties across speakers of all languages. Language carries histories, ethnographies, cultural perceptions, and these differences, on the other hand, are quite vast. To reduce language to a biological phenomenon is to machinize it. Language in and of itself is a dialogue between the mind and the surroundings.
I found “How the Brain Handles Language” to be an extremely interesting text on a topic I know next to nothing about. I have studied the anatomy of the brain before in high school biology, but never with a focus on language. I would like to know more about how these studies are conducted and how researchers can pinpoint brain activity related to speech. I imagine this must be difficult, since it seems the field was split for a long time on whether certain language skills could be attributed to designated areas of the brain.
From the readings, it seems to me that language is purely biological. The parietal lobe, fissure of Rolando, temporal lobe, and frontal lobe are the main parts of the brain involved in speech production and comprehension.
Prior to the readings, I didn’t think twice about the importance of defining and conceptualizing ‘meaning.’ Meaning can be defined in over five different ways, which can impact the definition of language as a means of conveying meaning. I found it very interesting to read about the naturalist belief that meaning and words are inextricably linked, while the conventionalist camp believes that no such relationship exists. I agree with the author’s take that a balance of the two is the most correct.
The readings made me much more aware of what exactly is going on when I am learning a new language. The “How the brain handles language” reading showed me a biological standpoint of language comprehension and production. I think knowing the biological background of language, like the section about neurolinguistic processing, is interesting because it makes me more conscious about the language I am learning. Sometimes, it feels like foreign language just flows into one ear and out the other, but in that split second, the brain is actually transmitting signals and processing every syllable.
From the “How we mean” section, I also think understanding what meaning is and how it is conveyed/expressed and analyzed is helpful in language learning. Knowing that some words have just a single use in a language (monosemic) and most have multiple uses (polysemic) is helpful by identifying and utilizing those word types in a different language. Knowing that words can change when isolated versus within a sentence is also helpful when trying to comprehend a different language.
Both readings allowed me to have a different perspective on language and made me more conscious and metacognitive about what goes on in the background of my language learning journey.
I really enjoyed reading both of Crystal's works, and it actually threw the light on some very interesting concepts which I have never thought about. For example, it is very hard to point out the difference between “sense” and “reference”. According to Crystal, “sense” is the meaning of a word within the language, and “reference” is what a word refers to in the world outside language (aka “the real world”). Personally, I had to come back a few times and re-read the definitions since both of them are very similar to each other. For me “sense” is something similar to the definition of the word itself, and Crystal later on defines “vocabulary” as the notion of sense which clarifies the concept a little more.
Also, I find it very interesting that even though we can come up with the universal definitions of these concepts, we can never come up with the common ways of people’s perception of these concepts. In other words, for each person each word will have its distinctive “sense” AND “reference”. Even though people share languages and learning techniques, we all are surrounded by different external factors which have a significant effect on how we see, use the words in the real world.