What stood out most to me in the text was the functional relationship between the brain’s left and right hemispheres. In particular, it was really interesting how whether someone is left-handed or right-handed can impact which hemisphere is dominant for language (173). For example, in right-handed people the left hemisphere is dominant for language, whereas the right hemisphere is dominant for processes such as emotional expression and recognition (174).Since I honestly didn’t understand what it meant by dominant for “language” because there are many cognitive processes involved in language processing, such as being able to communicate through writing or speech, interpreting meaning of language, hearing speech and seeing visual cues for communication, etc. so I don’t necessarily know what they mean by language. I also found the theory of cerebral localization to be interesting, as some parts of the brain have been found to be related to specific behavioral abilities that are necessary for language processing and communication (174). For example, parts of the parietal and temporal lobes play important roles in the production and comprehension of speech (175). However, I disagree with this idea since similarly there is no hemisphere of the brain that is more important than the other to process language and other information; it’s a matter of both of the hemispheres working together that really enhances one’s cognitive abilities (174).
In thinking of the meaning of words, I never realized that there were different perspectives on the relationship between words and things. After learning about the naturalist and conventionalist views, I realized I resonate more with the conventionalist as I always wondered how and why certain words became our point of reference for certain things. Like how did we come up with naming different fruits what they were? What about an apple makes it an apple? I also found it very insightful in class when we discussed the importance of not trying to automatically associate words that we learn in our target language with what we call the things in our native language; in other words trying to translate everything back to what feels natural to us (188). I think that is so important to keep in mind because it truly limits our scope of how we view the world and we noticeably get trapped in an ethnocentric way of thinking our culture is more relevant and important than the beautifully diverse cultures in the world that we can learn so much from. It was also interesting to think of words in more simplified ways with various forms as I learned about lexemes; for example “walk” is a lexeme, which is the most basic form that changes form when different roots are added to it, such as “walks,” “walking,” “walked,” etc. (193). Now that I have this new knowledge, I think it would be very helpful to start learning lexemes and collocations in Korean, so then I can gradually learn about different root endings to help expand my vocabulary in conversations. Sense relations of words was also an interesting concept to me, because I feel like we identify relationships of words without actually knowing it; for example synonymy when words have similar meanings; inclusion when a word is a kind of a different word; antonymy when a word is the opposite of another word; and incompatibility as lexemes are grouped together in categories (195-197). I think this will also be a helpful strategy as I learn vocabulary in Korean so that I can think of the different sense relationships between the vocabulary relevant for me to achieve my language tasks that I’m outlining for my learning plan.
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