¡Descarga Language and the Brain (Unit 12) y más Apuntes en PDF de Lingüística solo en Docsity!
UNIT 12: LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN
—NEUROLINGUISTICS: the study of the relationship between language and the brain is calles neurolinguistics.
Establishing the location of language in the brain was an early challenge, but one event incidentally provided a clue: a huge metal rod went through the front part of a man’s brain, but his language abilities were unaffected. This proved that, while language may be located in the brain, it clearly is not situated at the fornt.
—LANGUAGE AREAS IN THE BRAIN: the most important parts that are related to language functions are
located in areas around the left ear. If we divide our brain into two parts, we’ll have the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. We’ll pay attention to the left one.
The shaded areas in this illustration indicate the general locations of those language functions involved in speaking and listening.
—Broca’s area: the part shown as (1) is technically described as the “anterior speech cortex” or Broca’s area. Paul Broca reported that damage to this specific part of the brain was related to extreme difficulty in producing spoken language. Damage to the corresponding area on the right hemisphere had no such effect.
—Wernicke’s area: the part shown as (2) is the “posterior speech cortex” or Wernicke’s area. Carl Wernicke reported that damage to this part of the brain was found among patients who had speech comprehension difficulties.
—The motor cortex and the arcuate fasciculus: the part shown as (3) is the motor cortex, an area that controls the articulatory muscles of the face. The part shown as (4) is a bundle of nerve fibers called the arcuate fasciculus. This form a crucial connection between Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas.
—The localization view: specific aspects of language ability can be linked to specific locations in the brain. This is called the localization view and it has been used to suggest that the brain activity involved
in hearing a word, understanding it, then saying it, would follow pattern. The word is heard and comprehended via Wernicke’s area. This signal is then transferred to Broca’s area where preparations are made to generate a spoken version of the word. A signal is then sent to part of the motor cortex to physically articulate the word. We are forced to use metaphors mainly because we cannot obtain direct physical evidence of linguistic processes in the brain. Nowadays we use the “pathway” metaphor. In early, other metaphors used were the Aristotle’s metaphor or the “steam engine” metaphor.
—TONGUE TIPS AND SLIPS.
—The tip of the tongue phenomenon: in this phenomenon, we feel that some is just eluding us, that we know the word, but it just won’t come to the surface. This experience algo mainly occurs with uncommon words and names. When we make mistakes in this process, there are often strong similarities between the word we’re trying to say and the word we actually produce. Mistakes of this type are sometimes known as malapropisms.
—Slips of the tongue: this produces expressions such as a long shory stort (instead of a long story short). Slips of this type are sometimes called spoonerisms.
—Slips of the brain: other examples are often simply word substitutions as a similar, but inappropiate word is used instead of the word we want to say. Most everyday slips are often the result of a sound being carried over from one word to the next, or a sound used in one word in anticipation of the next one as in a tup (“cup”) of tea. Although the slips are mostly treated as errors of articulation, it has been suggested that they may actually be the result of slips of the brain as it tries to organize and generate linguistic messages.
—Slips of the ear: this type of slip can result in our hearing great ape instead of gray tape, or gray day instead of grade A.
—APHASIA: aphasia is defined as different types of language disorders fue to localized brain damage that leads
to difficulty in understanding and/or producing linguistic forms. The most common cause of aphasia is a stroke (when a blood vessel in the brain bursts). The classification of different types of aphasia is usually based on the primary symptoms of someone having difficulties with language.
—Broca’s aphasia: Broca’s aphasia (also called “motor aphasia”) is characterized by a substantially reduced amount of speech and slow speech. What is said often consists almost entirely of nouns, adjectives and verbs. The frequent omission of articles, prepositions and tenses has led to the characterization of this type of aphasia as “agrammatic”. Example: I eggs and eat and drink coffee breakfast.
—Wernicke’s aphasia: this is sometimes called “sensory aphasia”. Someone suffering from this disorder can produce very fluent speech, but it is difficult to make sense of it. Example: I can’t talk all of the things I do, and part of the part I can go alright, but I can’t tell from the other people. Difficulty in finding the correct word, sometimes referred to as anomia , also happens in Wernicke’s aphasia. To overcome their word-finding difficulties, speakers use different strategies such as trying to describe objects or talking about their purpose, as in the thing to put cigarettes in (for “ashtray”).
—Conduction aphasia: individuals suffering from this disorder sometimes mispronounce words. They are fluent, but may have disrupted rhythm because of pauses and hesitations. The task of repeating a word or phrase creates major difficulty.
—DICHOTIC LISTENING: an experimental technique that has demonstrated a left hemisphere dominance for
syllable and word processing is called the dichotic listening test. This technique uses the generally established fact that anything experienced on the right-hand side of the body is processed by the left hemisphere, and anything on the left side is processed in the right hemisphere. An experiment is possible in which a subject sits with a set of earphones on and is given two different sound signals simultaneously, one through each earphone. The subject more often correctly identifies the sound that came via the right ear.
