The article about the function of our brain is a really interesting topic for me. I always hear people saying cerebral localization which means that each area of the brain to respond to a single behavioral ability. However, I have never known what the behavioral ability is related to. These parts must work together for speech including thinking the utterance and until finally speak loudly. Moreover, the article today makes me reflect a little on how I used to define the left brain and right brain. The left brain is related to logic, sequencing, linear thinking, mathematics, facts and thinking in word; right brain is related to imagination, holistic thinking, intuition, art, rhythm, nonverbal cues, feelings visualization and daydreaming. I always consider me as a math person, which means my left brain might be more powerful. By the way, I know that the left brain is connected to our right body and our right brain is correlated with our left body. Most people are right-handed. This somehow could be an explanation that Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area are usually located in the dominant hemisphere which is the left hemisphere in 97% of people.
Another interesting part of the article is tongue slips part talking about how these little errors we make becomes one evidence. I tend to make a lot of mistake during the speech or even daily conservation. It is the first time I know that the tongue slips are not random but are largely explicable to reference to certain basic constraints.
They talk about how we analyze the meaning and how we mean. I am fascinated by the part talking about people cannot easily find the distinction between sense and reference. It talks about there is no single word for ‘mother’s sister’, for example. But in other languages, like Australian, it is called ‘ngunytju’. It reminds me that there is a Korean word, but there never have an English word for it. The closest English explanation could be ‘pretend to be cute’. I always use flashcard when I memorize words. One of the bad habits when I memorizing new word is that sometimes I got confused with the meaning. I will memorize the new word with a known ‘conception’ or ‘sense’. This part is really interesting and helpful for me to think about how each word is defined and what they really mean, especially in the real world.
Comments
I think this should be learning journal #1.
Interesting points, Yushi! Tongue slips are, indeed fascinating linguistic occurrences. When we get to our unit our semantics, we'll talk about mixed metaphors, mispronunciations, speech impediments, etc. Language is very closely intertwined with psychology. Freud and Jung become especially relevant for these kinds of discussions.