I enjoyed this week's readings and hope to incorporate my new knowledge into my learning plan. Something about the “How the Brain Handles Language” reading that stuck out to me was the idea of the brain "scanning ahead”. I’ve always wondered how “slips of the tongue” happen (I’m very familiar with them), and I’m curious to learn more about the pattern recognition that goes into the “scanning”. A question I have about a (possibly) problematic claim I found in the “How We Mean” chapter is the statement that the true study of semantics is “objective.” I’m not sure how objective one can be when describing meaning, especially if the word “meaning” contains multiple meanings. After learning about the different parts of the brain that enable speech and comprehension, I think language is partially a biological phenomenon. Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area, and areas along the fissure of Ronaldo are crucial to the production and comprehension of speech, and this is evolutionary. This evolution shows the biological foundation of language, but cultural and social factors also contribute. With sounds used to name words being (mostly) arbitrary, people decided what words would mean in a non-biological way. Since “different languages talk about the world in different ways”, it’s hard for me to fully conceptualize meaning, but the “How We Analyze Meaning” chapter helped. Separating “words” and “lexemes” helps to break down words and their sentence structures. Vocabulary (and the meaning of words) is associated with sense, which is why context clues add clarity to vocabulary words. The explanation of why dictionaries usually include the word in a sentence inspired an idea that can help advance my learning of a foreign language. When I create flashcards, I can include the word in a sentence to help solidify my understanding of its “sense”.
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