Download Lecture 2 - wseh2elt

1
The fact that we – human beings – acquire our
mother tongues and are able to learn other
languages is the result of the brain we have.
We will be looking at this brain of ours, at
areas that specialise in language, and also at
the brain as a system of systems in which
connections between areas are as important
as the areas themselves.
That is why we will start by asking:
What’s the matter?
We often refer to our brains by means of a
phrase grey matter.
In fact (Damasio 1994, among others), there
are two kinds of matter:
- grey matter, containing 10 billion neurons
- white matter, 10 trillion synapses
(each neuron having between 1000 and 6000
synaptic connections with other neurons)
All neurons (the grey matter) consist of the
CELL and a number of projections branching
out.
These projections make it possible for the
neurons to shake hands with other neurons
(creating the white-matter network of
connections): AXONS reach out sending
electro-chemical signals which are received
by DENDRITES.
The brain consists of two hemispheres - left
and right – which asymmetrically control the
left and the right side of the body (this means
that the left hemisphere controls the right
side and vice versa).
As a result of this asymmetry as well as
hemisphere specialisation the two halves of
the brain are often referred to as two brains:
THE LEFT BRAIN AND THE RIGHT BRAIN
As indicated in the humorous picture in the previous
slide,
the left brain is orderly, analytical and generally
seens as the area of reason;
the right brain is emotional, imaginative and highly
creative.
The areas in charge of language processing are
located in the left brain …,
… which is an oversimplification, as will be
seen soon.
Yet, first things first ;-)
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Broca’s area – responsible for the production
of speech (and in charge of grammar)
How do we know?
Among others, because Broca’s aphasia
involves a syntactic deficit – such patients
struggle to get their meaning across but they
eventually make sense; their main problem is
grammar
Mr. Ford (a stroke victim; following Pinker
1994):
Head, fall, Jesus Christ, me, no good, stroke …
Thursdaz, er, er, er, no Fridaz, Bar+ba+ra …
wife … and, oh, car … drive … purnpike …
you know … rest and tee-vee.
He understood questions like: Does a stone
float on water?
but failed to answer questions requiring
grammatical operations like: The lion was
killed by the tiger. Which animal is dead?
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Broca’s area – responsible for the production of
speech
Wernicke’s area – responsible for the
understanding of speech (words and their
meanings).
How do we know?
Among others, from cases of Wernicke’s aphasia,
which involves a semantic and lexical deficit –
such patients utter strings of words which are
more or less grammatical but make no sense.
Mr. Gorgan (following Pinker 1994): I’ve done a
lot well, I impose a lot while, on the other
hand, you know what I mean. I have to run
around, look it over, trebbin and all that sort
of stuff.
Besides, such patients have problems naming
objects, coming up with related words or
sound distortions: table – chair; clip - plick
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Broca’s area – responsible for the production
of speech
Wernicke’s area – responsible for the
understanding of speech
Arcuate fasciculus (the connection between
Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas)
Motor cortex (without which we would not be
able to control our articulatory apparatus)
Yes, there is.
We know this, because right brain damage
makes some aspects of language processing
impossible.
These aspects include ….
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metaphor
humour
concrete vocabulary
word-picture associations
intonation
singing and language expression
writing
spatial reasoning
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handedness and language – in left-handed people:
70% have lannguage in the left hemisphere
15% - in the right hemisphere
15% - in both hemispheres
men and women
 men – spatial reasoning; women – verbal fluency
 in the case of brain damage – aphasia is 3 times more
frequent in men; women have more bilateral control
of language (their corpus callosum is bigger)
 phonological processing – men in the left brain;
women – bilaterally
Performance on a rhyming task (as seen in the
metabolic activity in the brain)
(Shaywitz et al. 1995)
C
same effectiveness !!!
2
Is language modular?
= is language incapsulated in one region?
The simplified answer may be:
YES – left brain, Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas
The real answer is more complex ;-)
The answer to the question of whether
language is incapsulated in one region has
been given based on a number of theoretical
stances.
Some of them include:
 Phrenology
 Nativists (Chomsky)
 Cognitivists (Piaget)
 Contemporary neuroscience (Damasio)
P. is now considered to
be pseudoscience.
According to
phrenologists, every
function had a special
location in the brain.
Language was located
under the left eye.
Language is domain-specific:
“... possession of human language is
associated with a specific type of mental
organization...” (Chomsky 1972: 70).
In the brain there is a special language organ:
“language is a natural object, a component
of the human mind, physically represented in
the brain and part of the biological
endowment of the species” (Chomsky 2002:
1)
Language is domain-general, we have to look
at its development in terms of a change in the
level of intelligence (Piaget 1955).
Dąbrowska (2004): While Broca’s and
Wernicke’s areas may be regions where
language is triggered, cerebral connections
between this areas and areas in charge of
general cognition (categorising, analysing,
visualising, etc.) cannot be denied.
◦ there are no centres, there are systems made up
of several interconnected units
◦ whatever neurons do depends on the nearby
assembly of neurons they belong to
◦ whatever systems do depends on how assemblies
influence other assemblies in an architecture of
interconnected assemblies;
◦ whatever each assembly contributes to the
function of the system to which it belongs
depends on its place in the system.
… In short then, the brain is a supersystem of
systems. (Damasio 1994: 29-30). Some of
the systems are language-specific and they
are connected to form larger assemblies
which, in turn, are connected to other
systems non-language-specific systems.
(new type of brain modularity)
 brain is a system of systems.
If we realize that, it will be easier to understand how
second/foreign languages are learned and processed:
how new words are noticed, remembered and linked to
concepts, how language chunks are formed, how rules
are abstracted from usage, how L1 rules are used to
endorse (often negatively) L2/FL rules
 cerebral location of languages.
L2/FL use the same brain regions as L1 but the location
differs slightly from that of our native tongue in late
bilinguals (in late but not in early bilinguals; based on
neuroscience findings). As a result, there will be areas
of similarities and areas of difference between the first
and every other learned language
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There appears to be a collection of systems in
the human brain consistently dedicated to the
goal-oriented thinking process we call
reasoning, and to the response selection we
call decision making, with a special emphasis
on the personal and social domain. This same
collection of systems is also involved in
emotion and feeling, and is partly dedicated
to processing body signals.
Reason and emotion “intersect” in the
ventromedial prefrontal cortices, and they
also intersect in amygdale
Because the brain is the captive audience of
the body, feelings are winners among equals.
And since what comes first constitutes the
frame of reference for what comes after,
feelings have a say on how the rest of the
brain and cognition go about their business.
Their influence is immense
What exactly happens?
The brain evaluates the stimuli it receives via
the senses from the language learning
situation  the brain appraises the stimuli
 this appraisal leads to emotional response
which affects subsequent cognition in a
positive or a negative way
The amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex, based on past
experience with similar stimuli, automatically appraise the
stimuli for the emotional relevance. Both the amygdale and
the orbitofrontal cortex project to the brain stem activating
the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems
(SNS – preparing body for action and PNS – calming the body)
as well as the hypothalamus (controlling endocrine function
and influencing glands) (Schumann 1999: 41)
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Second/Foreign language learners have brains 
brains have appraisal systems  motivation to
learn L2/FL is based on appraisal carried out
within certain dimensions
In language learning such emotional dimensions
or “frames of reference” (Gardner 1985 as well as
Schmidt & Savage 1992; modified by Schumann
1999) include: novelty/familiarity, pleasantness,
goal significance, coping potential and self/social
image.
Which dimension of each two mentioned below
would you say is good and which – bad. Why?
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novelty/familiarity
pleasantness/unpleasantness
goal significance: high/low
coping potential : high/low
self/social image: good/bad
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The brain is a parallel processor
The brain downshifts under threat
The search for meaning occurs through
patterning
The brain is meaning driven
Each brain is unique
Movement and exercise improve brain
functioning
Brain growth is enriched by continued
learning
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