While it seems obvious that language and its use originates in the brain, the specifics of such communication has yet to be elaborated upon. Some brain structures, such as Wernicke's Area (responsible for speech comprehension) and Broca's Area (responsible for speech formation) have been discovered and their purposes found, yet these are only the broad pathways responsible for communication and further specifics have not been elaborated upon. Part of the reason for this is that each individual's brain is unique, and, while similar in structure to other brains, may have a completely different pathway for accomplishing a task than another brain. However, in the future, being able to map these pathways for each individual may facilitate not only faster language learning but also faster learning in general.
Although every brain is unique, the owners of those brains often may think in the same way, especially if they speak the same language. This is because in order to be understood by a large group of people, a language has to in some way shape a person's thoughts. While this linguistic determinism is not explicitly mentioned in the text of the reading, the author does admit the "different languages 'parcel out' the world in different ways". This seems like a tacit admission that the way we speak influences the way we think.
I very much appreciated the distinction between words and lexemes that the author explained. I previously didn't know how to relate a group of words that have the same association/sense and this helped increase my understanding of language. I don't know how yet I can apply this knowledge to my learning of a foreign language, but it was also very helpful to know that I will have to relearn many collocations that may not apply in another language.
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