According to the work division between the two hemispheres of the brain described in 'How the Brain Handles Language' reading, I feel that in language learning the left hemisphere would be dominantly involved in understanding sentence structure, grammar, and vocabulary. The right hemisphere would be involved in the creative and emotional usage of the language, for example, using the words in a non-traditional way like in song lyrics, poetry, etcetera. I believe that the right hemisphere would have a role to play in the vocal delivery of the language too (since "the right is said to be dominant for... emotional expression"), for example, a happy person might say a sentence quite differently from an angry person. I understand it is not entirely correct to divide language understanding into two halves of the brain, but also believe that one half may be dominant in handling a specific part of language comprehension, but in the end a collaboration and connection of processed information is required for complete understanding. For example, both hemispheres work together to connect memory, visual information, and sound perception, and thus associate the meaning of a word to an object.
Different information coming together to make complete sense was analyzed under a different context in the 'How to investigate language structure' reading. While learning a language, there are always multiple perceptions in, let's say, a statement that a learner might not understand without advanced training as well as cultural immersion. A learner begins with learning the components separately and then with experience, they come together to form a sentence with complete meaning and consisting of several layers, each a result of cultural and social aspects of the language.
From the reading 'How We Mean', I realized that there were so many day to day things that describe the nuances of languages but I never paid direct attention to them. I thought about my own experiences, and remembered how my Mother dislikes when I conversationally and playfully say, "I'm going to die!!". Also, in my first language, Hindi, we have different words for uncles and aunts from mother's and father's side of the family. So far in Korean, I have noticed that uncles are addressed by the same term irrespective of which side they are from, but this is not the case for aunts.
Also, the description of how the word 'chair' came about and could only mean 'chair', went down to the very detail of the brain processing a visual image and connecting it to the sounds in memory, and made me realize the complexity of language and even though I knew this all along, actually sitting and thinking about the fact that languages evolved when a group of people decided to associate and remember that some sound represented a thing is just mind-blowing.
In the 'How We Analyze Meaning' reading, it was interesting to note the sentence structure and difference in word usage in different languages, and how they would mean the same thing in the context of that language. The association of other sensory information other than sound, such as colors, in languages was also very intriguing.
I believe these readings will aid me in my self-direction in Korean, because understanding the roots of a language, not only in a cultural context, but also in the processing of a language in our brains should be helpful in developing accuracy and multi-layered comprehension in the language.
