Chapter Two- Nature Contributions to Language

Question 1

What are the current views of language development?

Answer 1

• language is a social behaviour, it includes the process of learning to communicate in alignment with adults in social cultural groups
• language is a complex system that maps sounds (for oral language) into meanings

Question 2

Why is language unique to humans

Answer 2

• the brain: there left hemisphere of the human brain is most involved in language absorption and production of speech (also brain more developed than animals)
• the human vocal tract
• Animals lack generativity (eg. Parrots)

Question 3

Pidgins vs Creoles

Answer 3

• pidgins: a communication system created when people have no language in common, they tend to be used in restricted circumstances like trade. (created by hawaiian immigrant workers on the sugar cane plantations)
• Creoles: children who hear a pidgin as their input will create a new language that is much more complex linguistically, the languages produced are creoles
  ex. NSL

Question 4

What is the importance of the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language?

Answer 4

• a school for the deaf who had no form of communication because there was no sign language invented yet. These individuals received no language input because they could not hear so they created their own sign language because to communicate

Question 5

What part of the brain controls higher-level functions such as planning and reasoning?

Answer 5

Cerebral Cortex

Question 6

What part of the brain is in control of lower-level functions such as eating and breathing?

Answer 6

Sub-Cortical Structures

Question 7

What part of the brain is a band of fibres that connect the right and left hemispheres of the brain

Answer 7

Corpus-Collosum

Question 8

What is the Contra-Lateral Connection in the brain?

Answer 8

in many cases, brain hemispheres are connected to the opposite side of the body, that is the left hemisphere controls functions on the right side of the body and vice versa.

Question 9

what is ipsi-lateral connection in the brain?

Answer 9

when the brain hemispheres remain on the same side

Question 10

What does Wernicke’s area do?

Answer 10

Receptive language

language comprehension

Question 11

What does Brocca’s area do?

Answer 11

Producing language
grammar
expressive language

Question 12

What is Aphasia

Answer 12

• injuries to the left hemisphere of the brain often result in severe language problems known as aphasia

Question 13

What is Brocca’s Aphasia

Answer 13

language problems associated with brocca’s area,
- these individuals can produce content words but severe difficulty with function words and producing structured sentences
- plays role in grammatical processing
NOT FLUENT

Question 14

What is Wernicke’s Aphasia

Answer 14

damage to wernicke’s area within the left hemisphere is associated with wernicke’s aphasia
- individuals can produce fluent sentences including function words but struggle with content words
FLUENT

Question 15

Right hemisphere contributions to language

Answer 15

• the right hemisphere plays a critical role in processing pragmatic information
  eg. jokes, sarcasm, figurative language, indirect requests
  impairment in syntax and phonology when right hemisphere is removed

Question 16

Neuroplasticity

Answer 16

• the ability of the part of the brain to take over functions they ordinarily would’t serve
• younger brains can recover from brain damage much better than older brains
• brain connections that are used become fixed and connections that are unused become eliminated
• children have far more syntactic connections than need and part of the developmental processes involves pruning away extraneous connections

Question 17

What is the Critical Period Hypothesis

Answer 17

children must acquire language within a particular time window in order to be able to acquire it at all (biologically determined time- period)
- around 7 or puberty (unknown but is true)

Question 18

What is the Equipotentiality Hypothesis

Answer 18

at birth the right and the left hemispheres have equal potential for acquiring language

Question 19

What is the Invariance Hypothesis

Answer 19

The left hemisphere has the adult specialization for language from birth and nothing about lateralization changes with development