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Brain and Language

Lec. Tuncer Can

 

"Animals talk to each other, of course. There can be no question about that; but I suppose there are very few people who can understand them."
--- Mark Twain, (in What Stumped the Blue-jays)

 

Brain and Language ( Neurolinguistics)

10 billion nerve cells/ fiber connections/ neurons 30,000 genes

cortex( surface) : memory/ decision making

cerebral hemispheres

corpus collosum

contra lateral brain function: left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and vica-versa

localization : different abilities/ behaviours traceable to specific parts of the brain

Modularity

Assymetri

Aphasia : language disorders, problems of syntactic structures

 

Broca’s Area( front left part) loss of speech, difficulty in intonation, pronunciation, word finding pauses, funtion words neglected, agrammatic

prevents a person from producing speech /person can understand language/words are not properly formed /speech is slow and slurred.

Wernicke’s Area ( back left part) good pronunciation and intonation but lexical errors

loss of the ability to understand language/person can speak clearly, but the words that are put together make no sense. This way of speaking has been called "word salad" because it appears that the words are all mixed up like the vegetables in a salad

Lateralization : cognitive functions localized to 1 side or the other

 

Split Brains :  “The right brain does beter than the left in pattern matching tasks, in recognizing faces, and in spatial orientation. The left hemisphere is superiour for language, for rhythmic perception, for temporal order judgements, and for mathematical thinking.”

 

Laura (complex sentences) and Christopher (15 languages) / Morons ( Language Autonomy)

 

The ability to understand and comprehend what is said to us is a complex psychological process involving the internal grammar, motivation, frequency factors, memory, and both linguistic and nonlinguistic contexts.

 

“ İyi terbiye ailesi görmüş kişileriz”(form a sit-com)  

“ Benim konsantremi bozmayın.” (a girl in the street)

 

http://www.med.harvard.edu/publications/On_The_Brain/Volume4/Number4/F95Lang.html

http://whyfiles.org/058language/index.html

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/lang.html

 

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