A view that I find very problematic is the Naturalist View. I do not agree with the naturalist view (an idea mainly driven from Plato). Like what the article, “How We Mean” stated, we would have the ability to tell the meaning of words just by how they sound.
Furthermore, I believe language is mostly a biological phenomenon, but definitely not purely it. I believe it is a combination of biological and cultural phenomenon. In a biological sense, the human brain enables us to construct, think, and communicate through language. But in terms of what we speak and not how we speak, I believe an individual’s cultural environment is what impacts their language as well. A person’s family, background, religion, and ultimately culture also greatly influences language.
To answer the question about which anatomical parts of the brain are responsible for the production and comprehension of speech, the theory of cerebral localization which is the idea that a single area of the brain can be related to a single behavioral activity shed some light. This theory was supported by neurologists Paul Pierre Broca and Carl Wernicke who discovered that damage to certain areas of the brain could result in loss of certain linguistic abilities of an individual. For example, brain damage to Wernicke's area which is located in the upper back part of the temporal lobe results in the incomprension of speech. (though the ability to speak is relatively unaffected). The Broca’s Area which is located in the lower back part of the frontal lobe is primarily involved in the encoding of speech.
In the article, “How We Mean,” it states “It is the interaction between words and sentence structure which actually convey our meaning of ‘sense of sense.’ Words by themselves do not actually ‘make ‘sense.’ Only when they are used within a sentence do they make ‘sense.’ Sentences exist to enable us to ‘make sense’ of words.” I thought this quote from this article was interesting to think about, especially in terms of learning a language. Previously (and still presently), when I attempt to learn a language, I place great emphasis on memorizing as many vocabulary words as possible. Back when I was learning Spanish all throughout middle school and high school, I remember having to be tested for vocabulary tests in which we had to learn more than 200 different words about the topic of school. I took countless amounts of quizzes and exams to embed these words into my brain, and I successfully did so. However, by the end of the year, I still could not speak one single sentence in Spanish. I possessed all this knowledge about the Spanish lexicon, however, I couldn’t formulate any grammatically correct sentences. I realize more and more now that although learning lists of vocabulary words are important, it is definitely not the key to learning and speaking a new language. In the future, especially in this self directed learning course, I hope to be able to learn many new vocabulary words in Korean, but most importantly, work on being able to use these vocabulary words in sentences.
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Thanks for posting, Vivan. In the interest of keeping the assignments organized, I'm going to re-label this submission as SDLC 105 Ning Discussion Post #1. Please be sure to follow the nomenclature listed in the syllabus to help keep the two sets of assignments clear.