Module 1: page 1 - 5

• Language


  A universal characteristic of humans, compared to how fish can swim and how birds can fly
• Language


  • It is not only something we do but what humans can't help doing = natural
• Universality of language experience


  Each generation learns what to speak the language they are exposed to→ heard and spoken by others
• Language-learning capacity


  The human capacity to learn and create language
• Pidgin


  Language invented by people who share no common language, using lexical items from 1 or more of the contact languages that they have
• Pidgins


  • Chavacano
  • Hawaiian Pidgin English
  • Russenorsk
• Creole


  Language that was once a pidgin but became a native language, with more grammatical complexity added over time
• Creoles from different places still have common/similar characteristics
• The human mind tends to construct only certain kinds of languages, usually with English or Portuguese influences due to Britain's colonial power and worldwide seafarers and traders
• Creolization


  The process of creating new languages, where children acquire the language and add universal grammatical features
• Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL)


  A new language that evolved from idiosyncratic manual systems, becoming structurally more complex over time
• Older learners are less able to master the complexities of the more evolved form of NSL, compared to those who learned it at an early age
• Language bioprogram hypothesis


  The idea that humans have an innate, biologically-based capacity to learn and understand language, based on innate biological principles
• The process of language acquisition involves the language-learning child modifying and adding to this innate bioprogram using the available input in the target language</b>
• Critics argue that language creation, creolization, and language acquisition all reflect the same process, without accepting the idea that it is language-specific
• Vocal tract


  The structure and functioning of the human of this enables the capacity to produce speech
• The higher position of the human larynx, compared to other mammals, is a speech-specific feature that has survival advantages despite some risks and disadvantages
• No hominid before Cro-Magnon was capable of producing the range of sounds in modern languages
• Language


  Requires the human brain, not just the vocal tract, due to the brain's functional architecture and organization
• Neurolinguistics


  The study of the human brain and its functioning in relation to language
• Lesion method


  A method of neurolinguistic investigation that determines what functions are impaired according to injuries to different parts of the brain
• Split-brain patients


  Patients with a severed corpus callosum but an otherwise undamaged brain, used to study the functional differences between the two hemispheres
• Dichotic listening task


  A method used to measure the right-ear advantage, which was used to ask whether the left hemisphere was doing the processing of language
• Functional brain imaging methods

  Newer methods, such as EEG, MEG, fMRI, and NIRS, that have revolutionized neurolinguistics and can be used with adults, children, and infants with normal, intact brains
• Language as a left-hemisphere function


  The finding that language functions are typically localized in this hemisphere of the brain
• Aphasia


  A condition in which language functions are severely impaired, typically due to brain injury in the left hemisphere
• Functional asymmetry


  The phenomenon where one hemisphere is more important than the other for particular competencies
• Right-hemisphere contributions to language


  contributes to normal language functioning, particularly in pragmatic aspects of language use and semantic processing
• Women have more bilateral participation in language than men
• Broca's aphasia


  A type of aphasia characterized by difficulty producing speech, lacking grammatical structure, and typically associated with damage to the front part of the left hemisphere (Broca's area)
• Wernicke's aphasia


  A type of aphasia characterized by no trouble in speech production but with meaningless words and made-up words, typically associated with damage to Wernicke's area in the left hemisphere
• The correct account of how the brain is organized for the many functions that constitute language will be more complex than the classical model of a syntactic Broca's area and a semantic Wernicke's area
• Humans have innate skeletal or “core” grammar that constitutes “part or all, of the human species–specific capacity for syntax”
• Bioprogram builds a language using the available input to fill out the core grammar
• • Bates (1984)
  • Language creation & acquisition → nonlinguistic cognitive mechanisms seeking to communicating
• • Meier (1984)
  • General cognitive mechanisms could underlie creolization and language acquisition
• Sign languages proves that human vocal tract alone is insufficient for language, also not necessary
• • “Language organ” - by Chomsky
  • There’s a part in the brain for language
  • Universal grammar rules
• • Dichotic listening task

  Info presented in the right ear goes first to the left hemisphere
• • Left hemisphere
  • Language
  • “We speak with the _____”
  • Syntax processing