Communication is a complex process that requires many areas of the brain to work in concert. It first requires sensing visual and auditory cues and relaying information to the brain where the signals are processed in the parietal lobe. Comprehension occurs through top-down processing in Wernicke’s area, which relies on our prior experiences to analyze emotion and understand semantics of speech through context. Following the reception of this information, we formulate a response and use our motor skills controlled by the frontal lobe to dictate our muscle movements when speaking and writing. However, the reading about brain localization and dominance left me with unanswered questions. What is the significance of determining which hemisphere is dominant in certain tasks? Does having a different blueprint for language dominance in the brain impact the way we process language and how we communicate (or is knowing which hemisphere is dominant in language processing just beneficial for neurosurgeons to keep in mind while operating to avoid damaging our ability to communicate)? Although greatly simplified, this model demonstrates how regions of the brain are interconnected and enable us to perform the many steps essential for communicating.
Language would not exist without the aforementioned biological mechanisms in our brain. However, there are non-biological factors that come to mind that also influence our ability to develop language. A need for communication drives the emergence of language, which stems from our social nature and innate desire to group with other humans. Language provided the means for humans to work together to create and discover.
It is interesting how, depending on the language, there are more “precise” words to describe a reference (for example, many languages distinguish between paternal grandfather and maternal grandfather, but in English we have no such word). Each language also has its own synonyms that describe a particular ‘sense,’ which seems superfluous. However, words often conjure slightly different images relative to their synonyms, which exemplifies how different synonyms and words really are from each other in the meanings they evoke. These differences contribute to the colorful variation of words that are difficult to translate. When studying foreign languages, it is essential to embrace each language’s own idiosyncrasies rather than directly translating a foreign language word-for-word into a native language. Translation often degrades meaning.
From reading the article about meaning, I learned that words by themselves provide an incomplete picture of their actual meaning, especially if they are polysemic. Thus, in my pursuits to learn Turkish, it is important to couple learning new vocabulary with examples to see how these words are used in context. Exposure to variations in how a word might be used in a sentence will also establish a feel for the word’s collocations, which will be useful when trying to use that word in speaking and writing.
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