7 - Language Flashcards
Three central mechanisms for language
- Speech production
- Speech comprehension
- Reading / Writing
Which hemisphere is primarily used for language?
Left Hemisphere
5 levels of language representation
Discourse Syntax Word Morpheme Phoneme
Discourse
- a collection of words that have a meaning greater than the words themselves
Syntax
- the structural relationships between the words that give them meaning (different for different languages)
Word
- individual word
Morpheme
- building blocks of words (chunks of phonemes)
Phonemes
- smallest unit of sound
4 features of human language
Arbitrary
Duality of Patterning
Infinite Generative Capacity
Syntactic Recursion
Arbitrary:
- the words we use do not describe what the object is, they are arbitrary
Duality of Patterning:
- the phonemes in language can be used in multiple ways, can be combined in different orders to create new words that still make sense
Infinite Generative Capacity:
- morphemes and phonemes can be reorganised in an infinite number of ways, providing the syntax is correct
Syntactic Recursion:
- we can keep track of new additions to the discourse
- also shows that language is not learned by association, as it is in apes (sign)
Language perception
- the information that arrives in our auditory cortex is ambiguous
> the same word can have different meanings
> there is no clear gap between words
> the way one speaks varies greatly
Findings:
- the context of the discourse is more (cognitively) important than the content
- we compute all possible meanings subconsciously (200ms)
Paul Broca
- had a patient that had a selective deficit in language production, he could still comprehend language fine
- post mortem discovered a lesion on the Left side of the Frontal Cortex
- now called Broca’s area, the Left Frontal Cortex is for language production but not language comprehension
Carl Wernicke
- discovered that the area slightly posterior to Broca’s area was for Language Comprehension
- now Wernicke’s Area
(left frontal cortex, slightly posterior)
Aphasia of the Arcuate Fasciculus
- the white matter that joins Wernicke and Broca’s areas
- when damaged, people can comprehend and produce language moderately well
- but they cannot repeat words they have heard
Bilingualism
- used to be thought that exposing children to more than one language early on impairs language development
> because they are slower to utter their first words - but actually bilingualism improves executive function ability
> perhaps because the child learns to inhibit the non-used language - bilinguals have a larger language centre in the Left Inferior Parietal Cortex
- this is larger if they learned earlier and are more fluent
Executive Function Tasks
- cognitively demanding
- require cognitive control
- utilise the pre-frontal cortex
Deafness
- it has been found that deaf people learning sign language use the same language centres of the brain as normal
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)
- small electric current on the skull as accurately as possible to stimulate neuron firing in the area to stimulate growth and repair of aphasia
