Although there is evidence to show the brain’s function on language using, I would argue it is not a purely biological phenomenon. Human beings did not born with language but developed it pushed by the need of communication. Furthermore, language differs vastly across region which shows that language is a product of culture.
The author claims that sentences exist to enable us to ‘make sense’ of words. I do not entirely agree with this statement. When I first started using Korean words and phrase to try communicate with my friends, they understand the meaning of those collections of words. For instance, if autumn, fall, and leaves are put together with out any grammar or sentence structure, they still ‘make sense’. However, if the speaker tries to convey conceptual meaning, it would be harder to understand. For example, ‘the college tuition is way higher than it should be’ cannot be conveyed through compilation of words like: college, money, high.
There is one sentence that I specifically agree with: ‘different languages talk about the world in different ways’. For example, in Mandarin, we do not have words to distinguish ‘lend to someone’ and ‘borrow from someone’. Moreover, just like in Greek, we have words for each family members indicating their relationships very clearly. From my point of view, the occurrence in those vocabulary comes from the culture where the ‘po jia’ (male side of the family after marriage) has a hostile position to the ‘niang jia’ (female side of the family after marriage). In order to distinct family members from each side of the family, the vocabulary is produced. Learning from this, I would spend time to learn about the Korean culture so that I can better understand and acquire the language.
According to the reading materiel, collocation of lexemes and sense relations are two big parts of understanding in language. The connection between words, collocation, indicates the meaning. ‘You shall know a word by the company it keeps’ said J. R. Firth. Collocation differs across languages, for example smoke cigarettes in English and inhale cigarettes in mandarin. It has little correlation with the actual meaning of words (eg. Blonde hair). Sense relations show the relationships between words in four categories: synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy, and incompatibility.
As a mandarin speaker, I have questions about how Chinese analyze meanings. In mandarin, there is a multiple number of characters that map to one single pronunciation (even with tones). Besides, many of the characters have multiple pronunciations. Furthermore, Chinese is the only language that have little correlation of visual and sound. How can people remember and correlates the characters and their sounds? And how can we are not confusing about the meaning in conversations where no written form of language can be used to disambiguate different words.
The production of speech includes lobes and Broca’s area. The lobes located in the front and side of Brian are involved in speech formation and understanding. Broca’s area helps pass information to the motor cortex which controls the movements of mouth. It has an important role in turning ideas and thoughts into spoke words. For understanding speech, Wernicke’s area is mainly involved.
Comments